what was the last movie you watched?
- Thread starter Folsom Al
- Start date
I expect Green Lantern to be awful but outside of Iron Man, Captain America is the Avengers movie I am most interested in. Very curious about Super 8. My most anticipated may be Cowboys and Aliens.
Not terribly excited about the rest, too many sequels. When Harry Potter is all done I will probably watch them all when they come home, I have mostly stayed away thus far. Pixar never fails and I actually liked Cars but I don't see the need for all the sequels they are churning out all the sudden - TS3, Cars 2 and then Monsters Inc 2, with nothing original in between?
The one reboot I do have high expectations for is The Rise of the Planet of the Apes since Weta Digital is the primary CG shop.
Not terribly excited about the rest, too many sequels. When Harry Potter is all done I will probably watch them all when they come home, I have mostly stayed away thus far. Pixar never fails and I actually liked Cars but I don't see the need for all the sequels they are churning out all the sudden - TS3, Cars 2 and then Monsters Inc 2, with nothing original in between?
The one reboot I do have high expectations for is The Rise of the Planet of the Apes since Weta Digital is the primary CG shop.
I also saw Xmen First Class. I thought it was good enough... I'm about as casual of an Xmen fan as you can be though, with all of my knowledge coming from the old school cartoons. I can see why the hardcore fans wouldnt like them as much.
I also saw Hangover 2 and the new Pirates. Hangover was more of the same, which was good enough for me. I had a good time .. wasnt expecting much more than that. I thought this Pirates movie was good aswell. Best one since the first, which is still easily the best in my opinion.
I also saw Hangover 2 and the new Pirates. Hangover was more of the same, which was good enough for me. I had a good time .. wasnt expecting much more than that. I thought this Pirates movie was good aswell. Best one since the first, which is still easily the best in my opinion.
Cowboys and Aliens I think I will rent. Nothig about it screams "see it in the theater" for me. Not sure why, but it just isn't "grabbing" me at all.
And MKF, I agree on Pirates. First is the best, followed by this one, I think. The stories on the other two were just so far out there.
Hadn't heard about Monsters Inc. 2.
I like sequels as long as they are good. Terminator 2 was better than the original. Spidey 2 as well. Empire Strikes Back is considered by some to be better than Star Wars.
Even those sequels not as good as the first are fine with me as long as they tell a good continuation of the story. Sequels are often good because they can jump right in without having all the backstory required in the original movie.
And MKF, I agree on Pirates. First is the best, followed by this one, I think. The stories on the other two were just so far out there.
Hadn't heard about Monsters Inc. 2.
I like sequels as long as they are good. Terminator 2 was better than the original. Spidey 2 as well. Empire Strikes Back is considered by some to be better than Star Wars.
Even those sequels not as good as the first are fine with me as long as they tell a good continuation of the story. Sequels are often good because they can jump right in without having all the backstory required in the original movie.
I agree on the sequels you listed but think the list of sequels that better their predecessors is very short and those are some of the premiere examples. Most of the success stories were conceived that way or benefited from updated technology, bigger budgets and better talent involvement. Unfortunately in the latter examples that recipe is one that also leads to a quick cash in.
Most of my movie budget is reserved for my blu-ray collection, I figure if I can see it in the theater I can wait two months and own it at home. Not sure which if any of these I will actually go to the theater for.
Most of my movie budget is reserved for my blu-ray collection, I figure if I can see it in the theater I can wait two months and own it at home. Not sure which if any of these I will actually go to the theater for.
Yeah, I agree. I just listed those to show that sequels are not necessarily a bad thing. Oh, the Toy Story sequels have been good as well, now that I think about it. 
And that is the reason I said the sequel doesn't have to be better than the original. That often is a pretty high bar. I just want it to be a good, entertaining story. And I agree that too many are just cash-ins. But I don't know that I have seen too many of those recently.....
And that is the reason I said the sequel doesn't have to be better than the original. That often is a pretty high bar. I just want it to be a good, entertaining story. And I agree that too many are just cash-ins. But I don't know that I have seen too many of those recently.....
"Chocolate" - a Thai martial arts movie that is very good. I rate it along with some of the middle budget Jackie Chan movies with the inventiveness of the fight scenes. Very, very good. Might be seeing the next great martial arts star if she choreographed the fights. And, yes, people got hurt filming this. They have a "Jackie Chanish" review of injuries while rolling the end credits. Don't have a clue why the name is "Chocolate" but it could have been called "Fred" and would have been just as good.
"Bangkok Dangerous" with Nic Cage. It got reamed by most reviewers. I actually enjoyed it for the first 80% despite acceptable plot gaps. Then the plot absolutely fell apart and ruined the whole darn thing. The ending was nonsense. It's like they had a two hour movie to film and ran out of money at 1 1/2 hours.
The original "Bangkok Dangerous" filmed 8 years earlier had a much lower budget and although people liked this better than the first, I couldn't get past the first 15 minutes because it was super low budget and I've gotten spoiled. Perhaps watch them in proper order. Same directors - the Pang brothers. BTW, figure these names out: Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang. In another thread Asian names were discussed and although Danny Pang sounds like an anglicized bow to our audience, I don't have a clue what rules the other brother's name was following.
What's the advantage of Blu Ray over regular? I need to plan my next upgrade as 42" seems soooo small. When my kids have tvs bigger than I do ..... well, it's just wrong. I was lucky enough to get a plasma tv 8 years ago that could handle HD and HD wasn't even a standard yet. Some day it will die. Having no basement, the projector is out although I have heard of a guy who has a glistening white wall where he shows his movies and it works fine according to him (I doubt it).
The original "Bangkok Dangerous" filmed 8 years earlier had a much lower budget and although people liked this better than the first, I couldn't get past the first 15 minutes because it was super low budget and I've gotten spoiled. Perhaps watch them in proper order. Same directors - the Pang brothers. BTW, figure these names out: Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang. In another thread Asian names were discussed and although Danny Pang sounds like an anglicized bow to our audience, I don't have a clue what rules the other brother's name was following.
What's the advantage of Blu Ray over regular? I need to plan my next upgrade as 42" seems soooo small.
When my kids have tvs bigger than I do ..... well, it's just wrong. I was lucky enough to get a plasma tv 8 years ago that could handle HD and HD wasn't even a standard yet. Some day it will die. Having no basement, the projector is out although I have heard of a guy who has a glistening white wall where he shows his movies and it works fine according to him (I doubt it).
What's the advantage of Blu Ray over regular? I need to plan my next upgrade as 42" seems soooo small.
Glenn, Blu Ray supports 1080p (1920x1080) native content and is about as nice a quality picture as you will get on your screen. DVD is 480p (720x480) which means that Blu-Ray has 6x the pixel depth of a standard definition DVD and is 2 to 2.25x better than cable HD plus you'll see less digital artifacting than DVD or cable. Not to get too technical but it is a significant improvement if you can see it, and once you start going 50-60" or larger I think it is impossible not to. Once you start going to projector sizes the difference is quite extraordinary.
As for projectors, I think having a good screen is more important when you don't have proper light control than when you do. There are screens that can make certain tradeoffs to work around your room limitations. Which isn't to say that you can't enjoy a movie on a bare white wall if you have a bright enough projector and you aren't too finicky about black levels and high rates of contrast. I think for many the attraction of the extra large screen sizes outweighs some of the draw backs of less than perfect settings.
As for projectors, I think having a good screen is more important when you don't have proper light control than when you do. There are screens that can make certain tradeoffs to work around your room limitations. Which isn't to say that you can't enjoy a movie on a bare white wall if you have a bright enough projector and you aren't too finicky about black levels and high rates of contrast. I think for many the attraction of the extra large screen sizes outweighs some of the draw backs of less than perfect settings.
It's beginning to look like nothing but Blu Ray is in the future for me especially since that's all that will be sold. In the mean time, I couldn't pass up the free non Blu Ray Oppo, though. Apparently the Blu-Ray discs have a higher capacity of data which might have occasional use. I am very finicky about black levels and the resultant high rate of contrast. For a variety of reasons, a projector isn't in my future but it sounds like fun.
In the mean time, I couldn't pass up the free non Blu Ray Oppo, though. Apparently the Blu-Ray discs have a higher capacity of data which might have occasional use. I am very finicky about black levels and the resultant high rate of contrast. For a variety of reasons, a projector isn't in my future but it sounds like fun.
If you are finicky about black levels get a Viera plasma next time around. V series can't be beat except by some of the old Pioneer Kuros. Oppos are nice, I went a for the Panasonic BDT-210 recently to upgrade an older Pioneer Blu-Ray player that was getting long in the tooth. The cool thing is that you can mail away for a copy of Avatar 3D after you buy it and ebay that sucker for half or more of the cost of the player.
I have a Blu-Ray player on a 56" LED DLP TV and the difference between the formats is significant/huge on larger screens. One thing about the BR players is that they also can try to upscale DVDs to a higher resolution (interpolation, etc.) and they can sometimes do a pretty good job. Some high quality DVDs look pretty darn good on the BR players (I think Bolt was one I tried and really liked the PQ of the DVD on the BR player). Some DVDs won't see much improvement. Be aware, some BR disks can just be the lower resolution DVD data slapped on a BR disk, especially for older movies. Your mileage might vary on those.
Also, if you hook up many of the BR players to the internet you can get software updates for the player automatically or can tap into online content from a link on the BR disk.
My BR player is a Panasonic and was the highest rated picture (for affordable players) at the time. Other than being a bit slow to boot up, I have had no problems at all and PQ is EXCELLENT. All BR players also play DVDs. And with BR players in the $100 price range now, no reason to buy a new DVD player for your next replacement, Glenn.
Also, if you hook up many of the BR players to the internet you can get software updates for the player automatically or can tap into online content from a link on the BR disk.
My BR player is a Panasonic and was the highest rated picture (for affordable players) at the time. Other than being a bit slow to boot up, I have had no problems at all and PQ is EXCELLENT. All BR players also play DVDs. And with BR players in the $100 price range now, no reason to buy a new DVD player for your next replacement, Glenn.
The upscaling of DVDs is a bit of an overrated feature - all DVDs that are played on fixed pixel (LCD/Plasma/DLP/LCoS/SXRD) displays will be upscaled somewhere in the chain because those displays can only display their native resolutions, anything else is up or downscaled to meet it. The question becomes can the media player, receiver or TV do it better. Oppos are known for having best in class scalers in them, Panasonics are now considered above average. I let my receiver handle the scaling and other video processing since it has one of the better chips.
Yeah, if you're looking at an old classic that's been re-released on Bluray, you're not going to get the high quality picture that you'll get on a newer movie that was actually shot in high def. But on these new movies, if you compare the Bluray with the DVD on even a mediocre TV, you'll notice a significant difference in picture quality. It's really not even close.
I picked up True Grit last week but have been sick and can't hear out of my left ear so holding off on it.
So I just watched junk over the weekend... Wall Street Money Never Sleeps, ummm, I fell asleep twice on this one. Just not compelling like the first, I can't recommend it. Some Andy Sidaris movie (I bought all of em on DVD for $5 on Amazon). Nothing else memorable, except in between I "discovered" Campus PD on G4. It's like Cops but way funnier because this is the future of America that we're laughing at.
So I just watched junk over the weekend... Wall Street Money Never Sleeps, ummm, I fell asleep twice on this one. Just not compelling like the first, I can't recommend it. Some Andy Sidaris movie (I bought all of em on DVD for $5 on Amazon). Nothing else memorable, except in between I "discovered" Campus PD on G4. It's like Cops but way funnier because this is the future of America that we're laughing at.
There was a guy who used to be on one of the LA sports radio shows and he was convinced that there was no difference between standard tv and HD tv. If you have an HD package through your cable/satellite provider and they provide you with the option to watch the channel in both definitions then you'll clearly see the difference. I don't know if he was just trying to be a smart a** or not but I wanted to punch my radio and hoped that that punch would somehow reach him wherever he was at.
This is not a movie but a TV show. Does anyone watch "Top Gear" the British car show? It is incredibly funny and also has a lot to say about cars. Aside from the overall excellence of the show is one particular 5 minute stretch where a blind man drives a car around a road course and beats two sighted people in a recurring challenge. This is not a joke and "yes" he had verbal guidance from someone in the seat next to him. I am a bit of a car fanatic but even my wife was moved by this. Check out NetFlix, Top Gear, Episode 36 or otherwise called Season 5 Episode 6. The moment starts at 34 minutes.
This is inspirational. The man lost his sight while in the British army in Kosova so that adds a touch to it also. The guide and the driver were scared to death. Of course.
This is inspirational. The man lost his sight while in the British army in Kosova so that adds a touch to it also. The guide and the driver were scared to death. Of course.
As to True Grit, the original contained John Wayne's Oscar winning performance and it was largely felt that the Academy was simply looking for a good excuse to give him an Oscar. This one started well, I thought, and kind of ran out of energy or coherence. The "two guns blazing with bridle in teeth" was directly from the original and HAD to be in this one.
I tried to struggle through Winds of War, the mini-series, but bogged down and quit into the third installment.
I tried to struggle through Winds of War, the mini-series, but bogged down and quit into the third installment.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Don't bother. It's a mess. There is no plot shown in the previews, so at least it is consistent there. You don't really care for the actors much at all, the story is a mish-mash of junk thrown together without a lot of cohesiveness at all, and the acting is uneven. The sad part is, he seems to come up with interesting ideas in these movies but just can't carry it through. And the continued Jar-Jar characters just stink. We don't need the stupid annoying little guys in there for comic relief. The movie is better without them. And there is precious little comic relief in there at all.
It is nice to look at, but ugh, it's kinda painful to watch.
It is nice to look at, but ugh, it's kinda painful to watch.