Seen any good films lately? [3]

In the US we'd have to give up most (but not all) of our fresh fruits and green veggies in the winter, but we'd get by. I can understand Britain being short (though it shouldn't have let itself get too short), but shockingly China would be in a bad way as well. They've got plenty of land mass.

Agree Petty. Some of our spuds are sent to places like Egypt, growing conditions are better, they are grown and back they come as "new potatoes" . Theres a lot of call for home grown fruit and veg and "buy local", customers are getting cheesed off with seeing "Spain" or wherever on their lettuce when people think its easy enough to grow here. I know where I am even on balconies in the flats round me people are growing tomatoes, spuds in big bags, anything edible more so than roses etc. I grow runner beans every year because I love them, its the cheapest option and they taste a million times better than shop bought where its so commercialized fruit and veg has lost all flavour.

{{ My ole Grandad used to have trestles with beans and peas growing all over them, popping them in the summer and eating them right from the pod was so tasty, so sweet too. Fond memories. }}

Chinese students especially complain about the lack of taste in food, which I now think is a bit strange having recently found out they import most of their food. Perhaps it's because they get it from vietnam and cambodia so it's only a few days old rather than being shipped across the ocean. Or perhaps it's mainly grains that they import, I dunno.

I'm sure other Asians have similar complaints, but we don't see as many of them except Japanese and Koreans who are too friggin' polite to complain about anything, or Indians who spice their foods so much they can't taste the original anyway.

I like the Chinese, who seem to have the same amount of cultural diversity as America (not so much racial) and living under communism have the same sort of scrappy rebelliousness as the Russians ("If they didn't want us to do it, why did they make it possible?"). They'll happily break any rule that doesn't make sense to them (so long as it's not reinforced with machine guns or the like), not with the same glee as a Russian perhaps, but with a sort of straightforward practicality which is entertaining.

Just been to see Alien Romulus.
Was quite disappointed. Expected something better. Had some great reviews to.

6 out of 10

I tapped out of the Alien franchise early on. Somehow I intuited (from the existence of Alien vs Predator) that the first two films said everything that needed to be said and the rest were just money grabs. I should probably see Prometheus.

{{ 3 had potential, but got butchered in production by the Studio, however the Assembly Cut of it is a much improved version, especially over the Theatrical release which is terrible. But you have to be in the mood for 3, is easily the most bleak and depressing of the first 3.
After that I thought they were all varying degrees of bloody awful.
Had hopes for this one but been hearing its good for about half of it and really bad and bad ideas filling the rest. Shame. Ill probably still give it a go however, just for completionist sake as much as anything. }}

I thought Alien v Predator was great. Watched it about 10 times. Probably put it 3rd best behind Alien and Aliens.
I liked Prometheus and Alien Covenant as well.

Watched Furiosa.

Not very good. Way to long.
Never to be watched again.

Watched this a few weeks ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redline_(2009_film)

Not really a huge anime fan and the storyline/characters were rather cliched but the action sequences and animation were stunning worth a watch if you like sci-fi animation.

I rewatched all the extended LOTRs about 2 weeks ago. Even with the Extended's it seems jaggered. And I keep noticing the one or 2 bloopers like, Legolas shooting non existent arrows at Pelennor fields. And why would you " reform the line " and go straight into the huge feet of the mumakil ? I thought that was a bad decision by Theoden. Theyve got huge sweeping tusks with vicious chains attached for a start. These creatures were just sweeping man and horse like leaves on a garden path

They also gave Theoden stupid lines like "draw swords" at Helm's Deep. You're in the middle of a frickin' battle; nobody needs to be told to get their swords out. Lines like that and "reform the lines" are only there because they sound like things you'd say in a battle, not because they make any bloody sense.

Faramir taking the ring to Osgiliath, Arwen starting to become mortal (until she dosen't), Aragorn falling over the cliff then reappearing alive shortly afterwards and worst of all 'Go home Sam!' still greatly annoy me all these years later, pointless attempts to add additional drama in the films when it wasn't needed and completely out of keeping with the characters in the books.

Fellowship is still by far my favourite of the three films, but over time I've become less fond of that too. I still admire the trilogy as landmark cinema and very well made action adventure films but the production values and SFX only go so far to mask the issues with the scripts/characterisations/pacing.

The more of Tolkien's writing I read and the more I learn about the man himself I feel very sure he would not have liked the films at all.

I'd still argue the films are great adaptations in the sense of streamlining a dense huge scale story/world into a mostly coherent and enjoyable 10 hours, the crew and cast clearly had alot of fun making the films and for most casual viewers the trilogy are still considered some of the greatest fantasy films ever.

On the other hand I'd also say they are bad adaptations as they don't really capture the underlying themes/morals and general spirit of the book, Tolkien indicated in his letters that he'd prefer Adapations to cut/compress things rather than actually change plot points and characters and I don't think he had enjoyed Jackson's toilet humour and ninja elves etc.

I think Christopher Tolkien was right in his comments in that infamous interview years back:

https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/my-father39s-eviscerated-work-son-of-hobbit-scribe-jrr-tolkien-finally-speaks-out

Invited to meet Peter Jackson, the Tolkien family preferred not to. Why? "They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25," Christopher says regretfully. "And it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film."

This divorce has been systematically driven by the logic of Hollywood. "Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time," Christopher Tolkien observes sadly. "The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away."

But that dosen't mean I don't enjoy the LOTR films...the Hobbit on the other hand.

Simon Tolkien on the other hand later commented in an interview he felt the LOTR films had 'too much going on' and were 'too faifthful to the book'...he is heavily involved in the story planning for Rings of Power which may explain things...

{{ One of the things at the time of the films being released is that I was a surprisingly lone voice in being crabbit about them. I mean there were others but they tended to be in the 'I just like saying everything is bad because it's edgy and goes against the crowd' types, no actual solid critique of why.  
But I'd say when I first started dropping crabbit comments about PJ and the Coven it was against an overwhelming tide who somehow saw them as 'perfect' adaptations. Looking back on it I think its more to do with a case of when you saw them.
The vast majority of folk I was talking to were younger than me, a large number of them saw these films either when they were children or teenagers. A very impressionable age for such tales to grab hold, it was Star Wars for my generation, the effect was much the same - 'best films ever not a single thing wrong with them!'
I was 30 when Fellowship came out. I think that makes a massive difference in how they are viewed, and perhaps explains my early struggles to convince folks that perhaps they were less than perfect adaptations (hell I got banned from places for saying they werent good, well that and you know the buckie, language, and general crabbit). With time, and as those same folk have matured with time, the position is now quite different and I find I am not the lone crabbit voice I was of old. }}

That's a very good point about age of viewing, even independent of whether they had read the books or not.  I remember being taken aback when Farmer Dave expressed crabbit about Star Wars being about the farm boy escapes to a bigger world motif.  I had minor quibbles with Star Wars but was unable to see or imagine structural failures.  Yes, I can see LotR being the Star Wars of its time. But Star Wars had the advantage of not having a book to be compared to.

{{ I think it makes a huge difference what age you are and circumstances, I know my fondness despite all its obvious flaws for the Bakshi version is in no small part down to how I first discovered it- at the peak of my teenage Tolkien love, with no idea any sort of film of it had ever existed, and then just findng it one day, on the shelf of my local video library (and I mean library they had hundreds of videos laid out like library shelves and similarly categorised). My excitment in the moment of realising it existed at all was off the chart, my hand literally shook taking it to the counter and I all but ran home. Thinking on it it was only out about 4 years at time, and back then took literally years in the UK sometimes for films to turn up on vhs.
And luckily for me if you've never read the books they are terrible films to try to follow blind, which meant my dad with whom I watched it and who was never a reader was constantly asking me what was going on or why, which gave me a rare chance to interact with him on a subject I loved. So all those memories are tied up with that film whenever I see it, it takes a real effort to seperate it out from a cold hard look at the actual content.
I think for a lot of folk who saw PJ's films in their formative years something similar has occured for them. They become more than themselves.}}

I hated that a Ringwraith decapitated a hobbit in the "fellowship". I did know who the chap was but now Ive forgotten, in the scene he held a lamp as a wraith galloped through. This was after Frodo, Sam, Pippen and Merry had left the Shire and were heading for the ferry. That was totally unnecessary in my view.

Bakshi or PJ version? I don't recall that happening in the PJ version.

{{ PJ's. Its intercut with Frodo asking Gandalf to take the Ring to unnecessarily up the drama, cuts to the Riders sweeping into the Shire, border guard comes out and says "Who goes there" and the Ringwraith swings his sword at his head and cuts back to Frodo/Gandalf on the slicing head off sound. }}