Quote from: GeekyBugle on June 01, 2024, 12:35:28 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on June 01, 2024, 10:12:02 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 31, 2024, 01:03:19 AMNot sure if anyone has mentioned it but Upgrade is a really good movie masquerading as a dumb action flick, watch it till the end and thank me latter.

Well, it seems we can agree on something.

We have agreed on multiple somethings.

Well, now I have to disagree.

Willie's Wonderland was up for viewing and so had a look at it and was pleasantly surprised at how hood it was.

A guy is tasked with cleaning up an old abandomed amusement building in the Chuck-e-Cheese style. Except the animatronics are haunted and out for blood. Problem. The man with no name may be more dangerous than the monsters.

Nick Cage gives a weirdly subdued yet energetic performance as the utterly laid back drifter who is hell bent on doing his job. The gang of kids though suffer from Agents of SHIELD inability to react syndrom but are otherwise not bad. The rampant animatronics are interesting and a nice little divergence from the usual backstories for these things.

Quote from: Omega on June 12, 2024, 05:48:25 PMWillie's Wonderland was up for viewing and so had a look at it and was pleasantly surprised at how hood it was.

A guy is tasked with cleaning up an old abandomed amusement building in the Chuck-e-Cheese style. Except the animatronics are haunted and out for blood. Problem. The man with no name may be more dangerous than the monsters.

Nick Cage gives a weirdly subdued yet energetic performance as the utterly laid back drifter who is hell bent on doing his job. The gang of kids though suffer from Agents of SHIELD inability to react syndrom but are otherwise not bad. The rampant animatronics are interesting and a nice little divergence from the usual backstories for these things.

Isn't that almost FNaF?

Haunted animatronics in a run down eatery.

But past that they diverge massively. It has hints of Childs Play and Nightmare on Elm Street.

I went in expecting it to be yet another FNAF wanna-be. But it quickly hies off into the unexpected.

I found an interesting movie on Amazon Prime called Moon Garden.  It's billed as a horror movie and it does have horror elements but it's more of a dark fairy tale.  The girl who plays the main character is very good for such a young actor.  The rest of the cast is quite good too  The visuals are interesting and evocative.  The sets and costumes are very well done for a low budget movie.  This is the kind of thing I hunt through the no budget indie horror movies to find.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on June 12, 2024, 08:59:03 PMIsn't that almost FNaF?

They are, at most, only vaguely similar.

Same locale and killer animatronics. But how they play out are near diametrically opposite.

"He's not locked in here with them! THEY ARE LOCKED IN HERE WITH HIM!"

So the anime series The New Gate finally hit the small screen. I followed the original web novel series translations for quite a long time.

Its an interesting twist on the usual isekai theme. In this case starting at the end of instead a "Trapped in VR Deathgame" plot. Then the hero is mysteriously transported into the game world made real. But hundreds of years in the future where the vanishing of the players is a legend now.

Production on the anime is a little cheap and the editing is all over the place sometimes. Feels like a crew new to producing a series.

But one notable interesting element is that the demons in the book and anime use the randomization tables from the back of the AD&D DMG. I have seen this in a rare few other anime too. But its notable here.

So far the anime is ok. Not great, not bad.

Quote from: Omega on June 12, 2024, 05:48:25 PMWillie's Wonderland was up for viewing and so had a look at it and was pleasantly surprised at how hood it was.

A guy is tasked with cleaning up an old abandomed amusement building in the Chuck-e-Cheese style. Except the animatronics are haunted and out for blood. Problem. The man with no name may be more dangerous than the monsters.

Nick Cage gives a weirdly subdued yet energetic performance as the utterly laid back drifter who is hell bent on doing his job. The gang of kids though suffer from Agents of SHIELD inability to react syndrom but are otherwise not bad. The rampant animatronics are interesting and a nice little divergence from the usual backstories for these things.

  I watched that a few years ago to kill some time and help Nick Cage get some views as I was shocked he was in it (not that shocked he was on his grind where the did not use or understand the word "no").  I developed a whole side theory as to how he was a super soldier roaming the country and getting "recharges" from that insane energy drink he quaffed down relentlessly.  When his watch went off facing that monster to take a break and he handed his knife to the girl I was laughing hard.   

  The movie telling me NOTHING about Cage's character, yet Cage telling me EVERYTHING about his character without speaking a word was pretty awesome. 

Cage got into some tax trouble so he had to take any role that was offered to him.  That's why he is in so many disparate movies.  He really couldn't afford to say no to a paycheck.

I know and it seems some interesting movies were left in the wake of that.  In Willie's Wonderland he never speaks once, but he elevates the movie a great deal and in every low budget movie I have seen him in, I never see him dial it in.  He always seems to be putting an honest effort in. 

The internet ruined Cages rep with memes and his career has never really recovered. That and a few bad movies in the early 00s didnt help.

But you watch him act and he usually puts his all into a role. And apparently he hits his marks and relatively easy to work with.

I think it helps that Cage started his career doing indie movies, and he appreciates them for what they are.

Having massive debt is also a motivator, though it's been a long time since his 2009 financial crash, and it is possible he's back above water. Still, he's not getting any younger, and he probably wants to work as hard as he can, for as long as he can, so he can live the good life in retirement.

In an interview with Patrick Stewart he comments that the only reason he accepted the role of Picard was because he wanted to add an extension on his house. He figured the show would last a season at best. And we know how that went.

I finally finished watching Panzer World Galient after like 20 years.

An anime series that drops mecha into a alien medieval setting. From the same person as did Armored Troopers Votoms. I had the series to episode 10 or 12. But no longer have a VHS and so all my old tapes from the 90s are inaccessible.

The series takes some weird swerves as turns out the main villain, is not what he seems and by the end of the series its escalated to galactic war. Then it ends abruptly.

Some rather nice mecha designs and points to whomever animated all the centaur mechs.

I feel like Aura Battler Dunbine has a more compelling plot in a similar "Mechs in fantasy world" setting. But Galient has the tighter plot. Dunbine meanders a bit.

Also finished watching Blue Submarine no.6. Post apoc setting where a mad scientist has flooded the world and is finishing off the survivors with an army of bio-engineered fish people. Starts off ok. But by the end you realize its a rather stupid cycle of hate and the villain holds a shotgun to the head of mankind to force peace. It too ends a bit abruptly.

Amazon Prime has produced a new Batman animated series called BATMAN: CAPED CRUSADER, which Bruce Timm is working on, and is clearly modeled on the 1990s Batman: The Animated Series.

Short take: Not as good as BTAS. Many of the sins of modernity are present, including gratuitous race and gender swapping, girl bosses, and injection of modern mores into a historical setting.

The animation is also worse than BTAS, particularly when they try to mesh CGI cars with drawn animation. The two don't mesh, and the animation on the CGI elements is really awkward. It reminds me of the really cheap animation that the BBC uses to try and complete classic Doctor Who episodes when the live action footage has been lost. This stuff was done much better even back in the 90s.

That said, it is still watchable, though I tend to leave it on in the background and do other stuff.

They're shooting for it to be Batman: Year One the series, set in an ahistorical pseudo-1950s.

The design work is mixed, they are deliberately going for a 1940s style to Batman and Catwoman. I don't like their Harley Quinn design at all. But they did an alt-Clayface that was fairly effective.

Oh, and there's a slimy tabloid photographer named Eel O'Brian, which is the real name of Plastic Man. (He's not listed in the IMDB page)