^I heard that once before as well and it made feel like 300 years old
also, couldn't agree more with Sarzy about ppl who eat potato chips and/or (cause one thing usually goes with the other) talk during the movie. makes me wanna go Fargo on them

OK, My choice is a big obvious Star Wars but here’s why:

1). Star Trek
There has never really been a great Trek movie. I always liked DS9 but I always found trek to be very limiting. There is the clinically dry Asimov type Sci/fi which becomes quite limiting and there is is the Frank Herbert style of Sci/fi/fantacy which leaves room to grow and expand and expand. I found Trek to be in the Asimov category. (I still like it though)

2). Lord of the Rings
Rings delivered greatness, it had to or it would have flopped. The books gave way to a whole new fantasy world and expanded into things like D&D and inspired worlds upon new worlds. The movies however were not inspirational in themselves. Well done and a great watch but the punch was already given to the books.

3). Harry Potter
Again, The books were well done and drew in every kid from around the world. The entire world was recreated by Rowling which sucked you in and put you in that world. The movies are well made and fun to watch but they don’t explore or break any new ground in movie making.

The Matrix
4). Expanded our views and took us on an adventure that was unique and new, It had a premise to be an amazing series and truly it was. The special effects were great but the effects started to become the movies by the last film and overshadowed the storyline. They just didn’t have a clear direction to take the movie into and for some reason felt they needed to conclude the story, although they didn’t.

5). Star Wars – Winner!
Star Wars hit the world with a wake up slap to the face. Maybe you had to be in our generation to have felt the slap. I was in grade 4 or 5 when it came out. It became THE most influential Sci/Fi/Fantacy movie ever, re-defining the entire genre and raising the bar on every other genre. The world could not get enough. From special effects to sounds, musical score, creatures, animatronics and stop motion. Star Wars set the Bar so high that 30 years later, people are still trying to top it.

YES, The prequels didn’t have the punch the original 3 had! But as a Spaghetti Sci-fi it has all the pieces. Not to mention the reach it has into our culture, Quotes from all 6 star wars movies are everywhere, ingrained in our everyday language. The religion, the lessons, the imagination, the books it inspired, the gaming, the slave Leia costume.

Yeah, pretty much when I see Cage in a film these days, I tend to skip it, but he did a pretty awesome job in this one. He still has his Cage-isms, but they're not annoying in this movie. This is the movie he needed to do.

Also knowing it's a sci-fi going into it will make you appreciate it that much more, because the beginning of the movie makes it feel like it's setting up a M. Knight movie or possibly The Ring, and I think that switch in tone is the reason why people are writing bad reviews for this movie. It got 31% on rotten tomatoes. WTF?!

this movie makes me get a bit of sawdust or something in my eyes a bunch

>> ^gwiz665:
Just because Moore is good a comics doesn't say anything for his movie making ability. Look at the Spirit.

Look at the spirit what? Last time I checked Will Esiner's dead and it's Frank Miller at the helm. How does that compare at all to the Watchmen?

Just because Moore is good a comics doesn't say anything for his movie making ability. Look at the Spirit.

I honestly don't care who's involved in this, the result will speak for itself.

I thought he did recapture some of the magic with Starship Troopers. On first viewing it might seem like a shallow, 90210-in-space action movie. Watch it again with more attention and it's a wonderfully arch, grand guignol comment on how war makes fascists of us all. It was not quite Total Recall in terms of classic movie-making, but it was on the level of Robocop in terms of social comment contained within brainless, R-rated, sci-fi action.

These demonstrate why I HATE the CGI laden, completely screwed reworkings of the originals. Taking great scenes and just throwing in 'comic' cg crap does not a better movie make.

And then Lucas further insulted the fans by giving us the original movies on DVD... as 'a bonus extra' with his messed up reworkings AND the worst possible quality he could find AND not optimized for widescreen tvs, effectively ENSURING you prefer the new versions.

To see how good the original trilogy could look, check out the work this guy is doing (he's a professional screen effects and movie music composer who is doing this for his own gratification).

He has a HD source for Star Wars and is going through the thing frame by frame cleaning it up... the bits he's shown of it so far are looking superb! Pity it's not being released (for legal reasons, obviously).

*sigh*

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

ba-ah ba-ah Batman. Cry the sheeple. Seriously, what do you think the skew of comicbook loving fanboys is on IMDB and RT?

I'm being a jerk - but mass appeal on the interwebz does not a good movie make.

This is not a great dark movie. 20 years from now people will not be holding this up to compare with Clockwork Orange. Hell - even Dark City will age better than this shallow fare.

>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^littledragon_79:
My favorite part is his compulsion to mimic the game's animations of reloading the weapons.
Yeah, that was what struck me the most about this, not only has he gone to the effort of reproducing the bulk of he available weapons, he has the postures, poses, and animations down well enough that he could probably be a stand-in for the mo-cap actor.
That level of obsession with detail would serve him well in the game industry. When he gets older, I think he should submit this with his resume when he applies to work for Bungie.
Otherwise, this just might come in handy for his insanity plea...should he need one, of course.


Hmm, he seems more like a hands-on type of person to me. I worked in games for years and even the artists complain that they don't get enough chances to do "real" art (real as opposed to virtual art). Mostly you sit in front of a computer all day long, regardless of whether you're a programmer, designer, or artist. He seems more suited for movie-making--set and costume design--where both the attention to detail and hands-on know-how will serve him well. I'd see him easily fitting in at say Weta Workshop or Lucasfilm.

Oh wow, so the entire Terminator series was actually the medication-induced delusion of a senile old woman. The movies make a lot more sense now!

Why does this ending remind me of a commercial like this?

Making movies, making songs and fiiighting round the woooorld. Russel Crowe!

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
No one wants to defend the Oscar noms?

Hmmm, well since no one else will do it, I guess I'll have to.

-Babel

While this was almost certainly Alejandro González Iñárritu's weakest film, considering the fact that I find Amores Perros and 21 Grams to be near-masterpieces (Amores Perros in particular), that was pretty much a forgone conclusion. The stories don't tie together quite as nicely as you'd hope, and it felt a tad long long, but it was really well made and superbly acted.

-Crash

Yes, it's heavy-handed; there's no denying that subtlety isn't a word in this film's vocabulary. But there were some surprisingly powerful moments, and it featured (mostly) very good performances.

-The Aviator

This was definitely one of Scorsese's weaker films, but there were a lot of things I liked about it. I liked the visual style, and how it tried to mimic the look of movies of the various eras. Cate Blanchett was really good. Ummm... well look, it wasn't a great film, but it certainly wasn't so bad as to be a waste of celluloid.

-A Beautiful Mind

Again, not great, but not awful, either. It was a competently made, entertaining Hollywood film. No more, no less.

-Titanic

I'm going to admit that I really liked this one. Though this isn't exactly the kind of thing James Cameron became famous for, I still think he's at his best here. This film manages to be a very good romance, and a good disaster movie, without one element ever eclipsing the other. Yes, it is schmaltzy, but I think an unabashed romance like this is allowed to have a bit of schmaltz. I still remember seeing this opening weekend, when the only buzz around it was "how hard is this film going to FLOP??" and walking out completely stunned. I know it isn't "cool" to like this film because of the way it was embraced by teenage girls, but you know what? I don't care. I think it's great, old-fashioned movie-making. Also: if you can remain dry-eyed during the sequence in which the string quartet plays while various passengers make their final preparations, then you sir are made of stone.

-The English Patient

I can't defend this one too vigourously, as I thought it was horribly overrated, but I will admit that it wasn't terrible. I honestly don't remember much about it... Ralph Fiennes was very good, though, as he always is (and go see In Bruges if you want to see a very different, and very hilarious, performance from him).

Downloading movies is immoral? Wow. Bit of a strech there ain't it?

Let's all admit one fact, good movies make alot of money regardless of pirating or not, bad movies don't make any money either way. Word of mouth is still the best way of getting to know good movies, and some movies simply have to be seen on the big screen, I regret not seeing Citizen Kane or Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen, but I bought both on DVD. Some movies I have no choice but download because frankly how else am I suppposed to see an arthouse Hungarian flick in the Middle East or Central Asia? the distribution model doesn't exist to cover viewers like me.

I believe the problem still inherently lies in an old distribution model trying to making money in a digital age, look at how the RIAA deals with their consumers their business model to this day. They need to rethink the market totally, some signs are already there, in Russia rampant piracy has forced companies to publish DVDs on the market very quickly to make back revenue from piracy, that works really well in a nation were piracy is rampant. These are the so called R9 rips that have Russian and English audio tracks.

I still think pulling down clips off Youtube is a stupid way to deal with piracy, there are countless old and new movies I watched because of clips or trailers up online, its free marketing. Pure online distribution should be readily taken up by the studios, as well as multi format releases occuring across several formats at the same time, cinema, Pay TV, rental and online (spreading revenue potential across alot more markets). Special DVD releases after 3 or so months would supplement that, HellBoy and Pitch Black made almost no money at the box office but DVD sales proved lucrative.

However re-thinking the model is harder and more risky then simply blaming piracy, but the problem won't go away at all especially with increasing digitization of the cinema format as a whole.

Been waiting for the day when my cell phone doubles as a computer -- where you can watch television, movies, make calls, send faxes, emails, surf the web, etc.

It's only a matter of time before it's all-in-one and pocket-sized.