movies

[cardsfansince82]

Two movies I'm looking forward to, Restrepo and Get Low. Anybody seen them?

I mentioned Restrepo and got no response. I'm going to see it tomorrow after work.

[cpebbles]

Scott Pilgrim was good, but not great. If Hot Fuzz was 90% comedy, 10% spectacle, this is Wright's attempt to reverse that. There are a handful of very funny moments (Most from the gay roommate, but Cera is a lot better than current groupthink will allow anyone to acknowledge), but in honesty I found myself grinning in exhilaration far more often than laughing, and in general I find the comedy more fulfilling.

[Bo Hart]

The Expendables: 1/10

[clevername]

I liked Scott Pilgrim quite a bit.

[Arthur Dent]

I quite enjoyed Scott Pilgrim on summer movie grounds, but I was somewhat bugged by the central conceit whereby Scott must fight seven bosses to earn the reward of Ramona who seems to have very little agency of her own. Reading around, this seems to be 180 degrees off from the comic. I really enjoyed this review which makes me want to read the comics.

http://www.theawl.com/2010/08/scott-pil ... sus-itself

The conclusion:

Movies just have less space available to them than do comics, and clearly they had to get through all seven exes. But that necessity spins out into other necessities: the main character has to be male, there has to be a clear romantic tension and resolution, there can’t be distractions from side characters. And though a lot of the great things about the comic are preserved, that sense of outward focus and of ladies existing without reference to dudes (or dudes without reference to ladies, honestly) absolutely vanishes.

I come here not to trash summer action movies; after all, I am probably going to go see The Expendables while my girlfriend is at a bridal shower I am confusingly not invited to. (I am thinking of it as my own little gender roles party!) But the process of adaptation has a way of revealing the essence of a medium. What Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World shows is just how small movies are.

Any narrative has to be cut to the bone; any visual element included for aesthetic purposes necessarily obscures a gesture or a shot that could have revealed something about character or context. And these huge differences between movies and comics speak back to Scott Pilgrim's central message about the power of pop culture to shape our understanding of the world. Might someone whose reality has been shaped by the slower progression of a comic have less expectation of sudden, dramatic change than someone whose pop culture diet was primarily movies and goal-oriented video games? Scott and Ramona’s maturation mirrors the maturation of games themselves from simple 8-bit shooters to sprawling virtual worlds. The side-scrolling progression of the initial phase of their romance (go through each stage, beat the boss, go on to the next stage) turns out to be insufficient and unrewarding; it falls apart when faced with reality. So something new has to come along, something more like a sandbox game or an RPG where you’re free to explore and build up experience gradually before encountering big emotional moments on your own terms.

I’m not going to argue here that video games or comics contain more positive depictions of women than do movies, because that would be crazy. Rather: they could. Movies are old enough and big enough now that their artistic expectations have become indistinguishable from their technical features; somehow, the need to have a male protagonist is as unavoidable as keeping a film under two hours, or lining the sound up with the visuals. Games and comics are still relatively new, and relatively small, and still doing a lot of internal thinking about how they can and could work. As those get figured out, they’ll inevitably get wedded to aesthetic features, and harden into conventions that become self-reinforcing as audience expectation determines what will and won’t be rewarding. Scott Pilgrim represents one particular argument about how comics could work, and it’s an argument I like. But mostly, I like that it’s having this argument. That’s not really present in Scott Pilgrim the movie, and while I understand how that happens, and while I did enjoy it, I’m not entirely happy about it.

[MrCrowesGarden]

The Expendables: 1/10

More like 110/10.

[PujolJunkie]

IMHO, Scott Pilgrim was incredible. Lots of legitimately hard laughter, some really clever scenes. The insane thing is, I didn't know going in that it was an Edgar Wright movie. No wonder I loved it.

[cardsfansince82]

Two movies I'm looking forward to, Restrepo and Get Low. Anybody seen them?

I mentioned Restrepo and got no response. I'm going to see it tomorrow after work.

Restrepo was really good. That's about as close to what war is really like that we are ever going to see.

[Maclowery]

I enjoyed the [expletive] outta Scott Pilgrim. I was very happy there were so many great lines that didn't get into the trailers. The fight scenes were awesome.

[lukethedrifter]

Two movies I'm looking forward to, Restrepo and Get Low. Anybody seen them?

I mentioned Restrepo and got no response. I'm going to see it tomorrow after work.

Restrepo was really good. That's about as close to what war is really like that we are ever going to see.

still haven't made it yet. hope it's playing when i finally get around to going.