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Post by guttersnipe on Dec 16, 2020 9:53:40 GMT -8
Absolutely. I couldn't help but arrive at a parallel with Deja Vu, because whereas both films are couched in "reality" and offer up a hard sci-fi premise in the midst of serious drama, the earlier film greatly benefits from the irreverence of Denzel's audience surrogacy, so when the boffins are hitting him over the head with the (plausible? Who knows?) science of tachyons and Voight-Kampffing CCTV footage he simply smashes a monitor in frustration and pokes a pencil through a loop of paper to say, "You're talking about a window into the past". I thought this sort of leavening agent was sorely missing from Tenet, where some psycho-babble was masking a simple statement of "he's also in the other car, but from the past or future". Red Dwarf, which is kind of like our Futurama, got a lot of mileage from undermining talky conceits with things like, "Is she doing what I think she's doing? Playing pool with planets?"
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Post by guttersnipe on Dec 16, 2020 10:02:59 GMT -8
Oh, incidentally, I had a look at that Metacritic list (where most of the entries don't mean anything to me right now) and already anticipate a minor Twin Peaks-style upset over the inclusion of Lovers Rock and Mangrove, which as far as I'm concerned are (excellent) episodes of Small Axe, but seem to have been "elevated" to film status by the sniffier breed of critics.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 16, 2020 10:44:49 GMT -8
I think the " Twin Peaks is a movie" never made much sense (is the argument that it was all helmed by a single director? I guess Will & Grace is a 100-hour motion picture, then), but... I can sort of understand the argument for episodes of Small Axe. Like, taken on its own, Mangrove is a two-hour self-contained story. It streams as an "episode" of a larger show, but it could easily be watched as a piece by itself. So I don't quite mind it being included, especially in an age when the lines between TV and film really have been blurring substantially. I'm not a big fan of Supes myself (I like my heroes to have more obvious limitations), but this one sounded interesting because I often dig on "what if" stories and parallel universes, and I like the inherent irony of a collectivist society championing an ubermensch. Unfortunately, it's rushed as hell; Superman finds out about the gulags in as little as quarter of an hour and incinerates Stalin literally minutes of screentime later, so there's actually precious little world built for it to suddenly U-turn on. This is my problem with a lot of the DC animated films - in adapting popular stories, they try to cram too much story in too little time. All-Star Superman is one of the most impressive Superman stories ever written, but the film adaptation, in trying to fit a twelve-issue miniseries into a 75-minute movie, loses its sense of scope and wonder, feeling more like a checklist that skips over half the events in the story. Also, have you actually read X-Men: Age of Apocalypse? Or are you referring to the 2016 movie? Not sure I've heard either one get a lot of praise, haha.
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Post by guttersnipe on Dec 16, 2020 12:15:15 GMT -8
I think the " Twin Peaks is a movie" never made much sense (is the argument that it was all helmed by a single director? I guess Will & Grace is a 100-hour motion picture, then), but... I can sort of understand the argument for episodes of Small Axe. Like, taken on its own, Mangrove is a two-hour self-contained story. It streams as an "episode" of a larger show, but it could easily be watched as a piece by itself. So I don't quite mind it being included, especially in an age when the lines between TV and film really have been blurring substantially. But by the same token, any anthology series permits individual parts to be treated as films; I mean I saw An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge long before I saw any episodes of The Twilight Zone. I completely understand why Serling bought it and screened it under his banner because The Zone is basically an umbrella for all sorts of weird stories and that short fit the look and indeed runtime of his show. But I don't really think that works the other way around, or is even really the intention. The Small Axe stories do bridge along thematic lines (not dissimilarly to Dekalog), and I think they'd feel a little weaker (or at least lighter) divorced from their surrounding context. For example, Mangrove is the angriest episode and does some of the heavy lifting regarding white police prejudice before we get into Red, White and Blue, so when the later episode rolls around, you already understand (or feel) the incredulity of the main character's father regarding his son's decision to join the force. Plus, hardly any directors would or could make five movies in a year these days; even Takashi Miike's slowed down. Also, have you actually read X-Men: Age of Apocalypse? Or are you referring to the 2016 movie? Not sure I've heard either one get a lot of praise, haha. I read it back in the '90s and basically fell completely in love with Joe Madureira's artwork, and was amazed at its appetite for carnage (though truth be told, character deaths obviously mean less in a parallel world). The film I barely remember at all beyond being pleased that Psylocke finally made an appearance, and disappointed that she looked damn ridiculous off the page.
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Post by guttersnipe on Dec 16, 2020 12:37:47 GMT -8
the Saul Bass-ified Soviet credits Ah, here we go. Stark lines, strong block colours and still figures against moving backdrops. Lovely stuff, and the best minute of the film.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 16, 2020 13:07:57 GMT -8
Nice. Can't wait for it to pop up on HBO Max, as soon as the takeover of DC Universe is complete. But by the same token, any anthology series permits individual parts to be treated as films; I mean I saw An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge long before I saw any episodes of The Twilight Zone. I completely understand why Serling bought it and screened it under his banner because The Zone is basically an umbrella for all sorts of weird stories and that short fit the look and indeed runtime of his show. But I don't really think that works the other way around, or is even really the intention. The Small Axe stories do bridge along thematic lines (not dissimilarly to Dekalog), and I think they'd feel a little weaker (or at least lighter) divorced from their surrounding context. For example, Mangrove is the angriest episode and does some of the heavy lifting regarding white police prejudice before we get into Red, White and Blue, so when the later episode rolls around, you already understand (or feel) the incredulity of the main character's father regarding his son's decision to join the force. Plus, hardly any directors would or could make five movies in a year these days; even Takashi Miike's slowed down. Could this be an intentional inversion of the TV-as-film trope? Television writers have been saying (often with an air of self-importance) that they're creating a "ten-hour movie"; now here's Steve McQueen creating a series of movies in the guise of a TV series. It feels like critics across the board are treating Small Axe as a series of five films. It's being covered by movie critics, while being generally ignored by their TV-analyzing counterparts. (Although a few TV critics did sneak it into their Top 10 lists.) I feel like X-Men comics lost some of their spark after Chris Claremont's departure (though admittedly they had been in decline since the late '80s), and the convoluted nature of Age of Apocalypse (coupled with the fact that none of it "actually happened") perhaps represents the peak of Marvel's crossover addiction of the 1990s. I feel like there was a bit of a racial in-joke in casting Olivia Munn as Psylocke in the movie. For those unfamiliar with X-Men lore, Psylocke is introduced in the comics as a white British girl, and after a few years is transformed into a buxom Asian woman, as she remains to this day. Don't ask me how, because the explanation makes even less sense than the prior sentence.
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Post by guttersnipe on Dec 16, 2020 16:44:42 GMT -8
Well, whatever will be, will be, I guess. In any case I think it makes more sense to include some of the individual parts on movie lists, rather than treat the whole broadcast entity as a single film.
I recall stating my favouritism for parallel universe stories way back on the comments for MikeJer's review for "The Wish", forever my favourite Buffy episode and my ticket here. Basically I think of these things as little gifts to a loyal audience; I don't feel they're of less credence than the source universe which didn't actually happen either. All just branches of a single tree. I'm not going to check any of the Psylocke backhistory right now, I'm instead going to see how well I remember it. I think the deal was that the X-Men had to retrieve some urn-type artefact in a sort of holy grail parallel, and in so doing Betsy became possessed by the spirit of a Japanese demon called Kwannon, which I don't think was supposed to be confused with the Buddhist deity of the same name. Now, Psylocke had already been drawn in her blue catsuit for some time (manga influence had been seeping in for a while), so her fellows and the readership weren't aware of any change until she started exhibiting new powers (like creepily phasing through walls) and a Japanese word became emblazoned on her face - I didn't think she had actually "become" Asian at any point, except for when the entity was speaking through her. I may have the details quite wrong, it's been twenty years or more.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 16, 2020 19:29:51 GMT -8
That's mostly accurate, but you're putting her Kwannon transformation in the later context of the '90s, not the original context from the '80s (which is what I was referring to).
When Psylocke first joined the X-Men (around the end of the Marauders storyline - one of the darker stories of the era), she looked very different. She was a purple-haired white woman from England, the sister of Captain Britain (leader of the UK's version of the X-Men team, Excalibur). A few years later, she was captured by a villain in China and her consciousness was put in the body of an Asian woman, which she maintained from then on. Several years later, this was retroactively revealed to be the body of Kwannon.
If this doesn't line up with your memories of the Kwannon comics, that's not your fault. Psylocke's "transformation" was subject to some continuity errors by the '90s writer, Fabian Nicieza, who took over after Chris Claremont left the series. Not remembering the earlier events, Nicieza created a new backstory for Psylocke/Kwannon, which contradicted the Claremont transformation story. It was quite a mess, but Marvel in the '90s wasn't exactly known for being coherent.
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Post by guttersnipe on Dec 17, 2020 5:49:00 GMT -8
Ah, yes. I've seen some panels of her original outfits (there's one where she looks like a princess from a NES game), but I don't think I'd read many actual issues with her in from the period. I think I always figured the real-world 'logic' of the later situation was "We're already drawing her like a sexy ninja, shall we just pursue a convoluted thread to simply make her one?".
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 21, 2020 7:42:23 GMT -8
Now available - my top 10 films of 2020!Please note that, unlike other critics' lists, all the films on mine are currently available to wide audiences. That's because I respect my readers and don't want to tease them by promoting films they can't yet watch! (Or because I don't have access yet to Soul or Nomadland, whatever.)
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Dec 21, 2020 16:25:51 GMT -8
Now available - my top 10 films of 2020!Please note that, unlike other critics' lists, all the films on mine are currently available to wide audiences. That's because I respect my readers and don't want to tease them by promoting films they can't yet watch! (Or because I don't have access yet to Soul or Nomadland, whatever.) I too loved that film, Hamilton.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 21, 2020 16:49:18 GMT -8
It has a director and actors and was filmed on camera and has a runtime over sixty minutes and was initially slated for theatrical release. I'm calling it a film and standing by that definition. (Though I won't deny that the definition of a "movie" was looser than ever this year. Like, is the YMS analysis of Kimba the White Lion a feature film? It's a YouTube video, but it plays out like a 2.5-hour documentary.)
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