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Post by ThirdMan on Jun 26, 2023 8:28:58 GMT -8
Scarlet Spider isn't really out of character, to my mind (he's always been something of a tool). On the other hand, I was surprised that Miguel O'Hara (Spider-Man 2099) was portrayed in such an antagonistic light, but it worked within the bounds of the story. My reaction to Asteroid City was in fact quite similar to that of Life Aquatic or Darjeeling Limited (both of which I found to be rather dry films which were more interesting aesthetically than emotionally). Asteroid City takes the metatextualism one step too far, and maybe it will be more coherent on second viewing, but it just kind of dragged for me. I'm a bit surprised that French Dispatch seems to be one of Anderson's least-loved films - I thought it was inventive and hilarious, and structuring the story as an anthology meant that no individual story really overstayed its welcome. Also, not sure I get your point re. Birdman - I loved that movie (probably my favorite Best Picture winner of the 2010s), and the theater/film dynamic worked really well. Perhaps a bit pretentious, but very engaging. I just thought it was funny, and quite lame, that my co-worker's friends were referring to the Spider-verse sequel as "only OK", because Samberg's version of Scarlet Spider (who, I repeat, HAS ONE MINUTE OF VERBAL SCREEN-TIME) wasn't consistent, to them, with the comic version. So much so that he decided not to see the movie, despite really liking the first one. Bwahaha! Anyways, as I said previously, I loved the overall visual design of The French Dispatch (it may be Anderson's best in that regard), but must concede that character-wise, and narratively, it kept me at a bit of an arm's distance, in that I was amused by, but didn't really have an emotional reaction to, most of its characters. Part of that was down to it being so packed with narration/dialogue, that I was too busy trying to keep up intellectually, rather than having it settle in emotionally, even after a second and third viewing. Asteroid City is a bit more scaled-back, and a bit sunnier (literally and figuratively), and I actually laughed at the deadpan visual and verbal humour a lot (as did the audience I attended it with), and found it modestly touching (with a nice little lilting score). I got nervous when the brainy group of teens started that memorization name game, because I thought we were headed towards a recreation of the longwinded card game scene in the underground tavern in Inglourious Basterds, but thankfully, it ended before it tested my patience too much. Otherwise, I thought it moved along at a really good clip, and I was always engaged, and never bored. Re: Birdman, I guess I confused your response to the film with many of my other online film acquaintances, who really, really disliked that movie (it was my second-favourite of the Best Picture nominees that year, after The Grand Budapest Hotel). Re: your reaction to Asteroid City, maybe it's Schwartzman, to a degree? Like, you can deal with him as an antagonist (in Across The Spider-verse or Scott Pilgrim vs The World), but don't jibe with him as much as a protagonist (in Asteroid City, Rushmore, or Season 4 of Fargo)? It might be worth investigating, a bit. Oh, and back to the third Ant Man movie for a moment, I honestly don't even know how one would render an environment that outlandish, and so far removed from our reality, in a "photo-real" manner. I guess they could've built more sets (did Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3?), but that would've been very cost-prohibitive for one of the lower-priority divisions of the MCU. At any rate, it didn't, for me, have the "actors-standing-around-in-paintings" effect of, say, the Star Wars prequels. Though many sections of the film did remind me of the Cantina scenes in the Star Wars movies.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jun 26, 2023 9:01:46 GMT -8
I've always been a little bit cooler on Into the Spiderverse than the consensus, but I will say I thought the highs of Across the Spiderverse were terrific. I think the fact it was only half a movie bothered me more than it should have considering I'm more of a television guy, but the problem was I find the driving principal of the movie (the canon events) to be complete nonsense, and it is very possible that the second half will convince me otherwise. I also felt like I was watching the movie on 2x speed at points (including how quickly people were talking, I could have used some closed captions). Some of the sequences were astoundingly good though (particularly the opening sequence with Gwen) and I just found everything about the movie more engaging in general that the first one. So I guess in total I'm probably still cooler on it than the majority, but for different reasons. With Into the Spiderverse it was more "I don't see what's so special about this" and Across the Spiderverse it is more "I see what's special about this, but there's stuff that bothers me." Regarding the "canon events", it's really just this film's version of saying that Fate is in control, to some degree, despite the characters' best efforts to change things for the better, across all universes. This provides me with the opportunity to touch on that Flash movie, which, while a much more conventional superhero movie than Spider-verse, is also tied to the Fate Principle. I really only saw it for the convoluted inside-references, and because Keaton looked, in the trailers, like he was greatly enjoying himself, putting the Batsuit on one more time (he most certainly was, even if the material he was given was so-so). Anyways, I now understand why some critics said the movie has some of the best, and some of the worst, visual effects around. Because, to start, the visual interplay between the two Barrys (played by the dubious Ezra Miller) was pretty much seamless. But the CGI rendering of real-life characters, especially during the time-manipulation bubble sequences, is very cartoonish-looking. Now, perhaps that was by design, but I can't imagine what the reasoning would be. Regardless, I don't know if this movie's going to actually turn a profit, because it felt like they spent a ton of money on the opening action set piece alone. A building collapses, and there's a maternity ward on the top floor of an enormous high-rise. So, you guessed it, we've got ourselves a BABY SHOWER (LOL)! And because Barry isn't supposed to touch other humans directly when moving at, uh, hyper-speed (for fear of killing them, or at the very least making them violently ill), he secures one of the falling babies (also rendered like total cartoon characters) in a falling microwave. That's right, he put a baby in a microwave (heh). Regardless of the middling CGI, it's at least an amusingly-staged set piece, and this movie does have a sense of humour. Is it genuinely good? Probably not, but hey, Nicholas Cage finally got to play Superman for a few minutes, so hey, good for him! And Keaton was clearly having a blast here. I also don't entirely disapprove of Sasha Calle in that very tight Supergirl outfit.
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Post by Jeremy on Jun 26, 2023 15:41:01 GMT -8
Anyways, as I said previously, I loved the overall visual design of The French Dispatch (it may be Anderson's best in that regard), but must concede that character-wise, and narratively, it kept me at a bit of an arm's distance, in that I was amused by, but didn't really have an emotional reaction to, most of its characters. Part of that was down to it being so packed with narration/dialogue, that I was too busy trying to keep up intellectually, rather than having it settle in emotionally, even after a second and third viewing. Asteroid City is a bit more scaled-back, and a bit sunnier (literally and figuratively), and I actually laughed at the deadpan visual and verbal humour a lot (as did the audience I attended it with), and found it modestly touching (with a nice little lilting score). I got nervous when the brainy group of teens started that memorization name game, because I thought we were headed towards a recreation of the longwinded card game scene in the underground tavern in Inglourious Basterds, but thankfully, it ended before it tested my patience too much. Otherwise, I thought it moved along at a really good clip, and I was always engaged, and never bored. See, I love the rat-a-tat dialogue in French Dispatch (I tend to be partial to shows with quippy rapid-fire dialogue, as some folks may have noticed), and I think it works very well with the quirky, ever-askew worlds that Anderson creates. Conversely, I felt the framing of Asteroid City kept me at arm's length throughout, to the point that I never really clicked with the characters or story. (It's also worth noting that, while it's relatively brief at 105 minutes, it's still longer than most of Anderson's other films.) Schwartzman's a fine actor, though I've never thought much of him one way or the other. He was good in Rushmore (by far the best of Wes' early films), and I recall he gave a decent vocal performance as the hero in Klaus. I don't think his performance was the issue (the cast was mostly good); haven't seen much of his work outside Anderson's filmography, though. Films can easily create more vibrant worlds - even through CG effects - if given more time and care. Problem is that Marvel has everything on a time crunch now, in order to cram 3-4 movies and 5-6 TV shows into each year. It looks like that pace is finally slowing down, and maybe the visual quality will start to tick back up, but it's been an issue for some time now.
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Post by Jeremy on Jun 26, 2023 18:25:24 GMT -8
I've always been a little bit cooler on Into the Spiderverse than the consensus, but I will say I thought the highs of Across the Spiderverse were terrific. I think the fact it was only half a movie bothered me more than it should have considering I'm more of a television guy, but the problem was I find the driving principal of the movie (the canon events) to be complete nonsense, and it is very possible that the second half will convince me otherwise. I also felt like I was watching the movie on 2x speed at points (including how quickly people were talking, I could have used some closed captions). I loved the use of "canon" as a stand-in for fate and inevitability, since it makes for a good hook (that nicely ties into Miles' origin in the first film) while also poking light fun at the general fandom obsession with canon and continuity. A lot of the thematic resonance will depend on whether Beyond the Spider-Verse sticks the landing, but it's a creative idea that manages to be relevant to the character of Spider-Man and meta for the fanbase.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jun 26, 2023 19:10:52 GMT -8
Jeremy, I love quippy, rapid-fire dialogue as well, but let's be honest: a fair amount of the dialogue in The French Dispatch, delivered via voiceover, was borderline unnecessary plot/character exposition. It was just endless. Some of it was cleverly written, but had he tossed a third of the more expository narration out, it probably would've allowed the story, its characters, and its images, more room to breathe and resonate, even if it's not an overly emotional film.
It is interesting what framing devices cause this or that viewer to become disengaged, though, as I imagine a fair number of folks find these multiverse stories a bit frivolous (what's the difference if this or that reality ceases to exist, if there are another three thousand available to the main characters out there?).
BTW, how did you feel about the CGI (and other) visual presentation of the third Guardians of the Galaxy movie? Did it look polished enough to you? It seemed like it featured a fair number of live sets, but one can't be too sure about these things.
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Post by Jeremy on Jun 27, 2023 19:31:21 GMT -8
I mean, yes, Anderson could have jettisoned some of the quippy exposition in French Dispatch, but he may have lost some of the fun in the process. His films are engaging because they have such a unique sense of identity and place, not just visually but verbally. His best films hit just the right level of humor - in multiple forms - to justify the weirdness of their world and the characters who inhabit it. But some of his films just get kind of lost in layers of weirdness and the funny never reaches the surface.
I dunno, I think Asteroid City would have been markedly better if it told its story without the multiple framing devices designed to put the internal story at more of a distance. We know that Anderson films are meant to be some distance from reality, it's less interesting when he calls attention to that.
The VFX in Guardians 3 were mostly good; it did seem at various points that the characters were interacting on actual sets (including some that had probably been constructed for the first two films), rather than in front of a greenscreen. It probably helps that James Gunn was given more flexibility and freedom than other Marvel directors, and he was given the time necessary to complete this film, so it has the feel of a passion project instead of a last-minute mandated homework assignment.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jun 28, 2023 8:59:34 GMT -8
Speaking of the funny never reaching the surface, I have to admit that one of the reasons I haven't revisited Isle of Dogs is because I found most of the dialogue, which seemed to be intended to be awkward or eccentric in a clever way....to just be awkward, and kind of flat. It's the only film of his from the past decade that I felt needed a second pass with some of the wordplay (I liked most of the verbiage in The French Dispatch, but simply felt there was a bit too much of it, and wanted some more comedic beats in between the endless yammering). Maybe I'll respond to Isle of Dogs differently when I finally get around to revisiting it, but yeah, I didn't laugh much when watching it my first, and only, time in the theater. Loved its visual design, though.
Anyways, I laughed a lot (at the deadpan visual and verbal gags) during Asteroid City, and enjoyed it a great deal more than, say, Darjeeling and Life Aquatic. Like I said, it might end up being a Top 5 Anderson for me. Need a second viewing to confirm that, though.
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Post by Jeremy on Jun 28, 2023 15:24:13 GMT -8
I loved Isle of Dogs, though I do think it's one of Anderson's drier films. The animation is amazing (I wish I had seen it on the big screen, but sadly I missed the brief window when it played at my local theater) and the mixture of English and Japanese blended quite well. I do probably need to rewatch it at some point, though.
As for French Dispatch, it's possible that the reason I liked it more than most people may have something to do with my own time working as a newspaper editor at college (it wasn't a full-fledged newspaper, but we did publish semi-regularly and I had to keep a steady stream of interesting articles across a variety of subjects, plus deal with layout, proofing, etc... Quiara can back me up). I kind of like how the film is styled like a magazine, with the segments classified as different sections of a publication. I was onboard with that from the beginning, but I understand that a lot of folks probably weren't. (It's one of his lowest-rated films on Letterboxd.)
Anyway, I did this a few years ago, but here's my updated ranking of Anderson films (top to bottom):
Grand Budapest Hotel Fantastic Mr. Fox French Dispatch Isle of Dogs Rushmore Moonrise Kingdom Bottle Rocket Royal Tenenbaums Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou Asteroid City Darjeeling Limited
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Jun 28, 2023 17:08:41 GMT -8
I loved Isle of Dogs, though I do think it's one of Anderson's drier films. The animation is amazing (I wish I had seen it on the big screen, but sadly I missed the brief window when it played at my local theater) and the mixture of English and Japanese blended quite well. I do probably need to rewatch it at some point, though. As for French Dispatch, it's possible that the reason I liked it more than most people may have something to do with my own time working as a newspaper editor at college (it wasn't a full-fledged newspaper, but we did publish semi-regularly and I had to keep a steady stream of interesting articles across a variety of subjects, plus deal with layout, proofing, etc... Quiara can back me up). I kind of like how the film is styled like a magazine, with the segments classified as different sections of a publication. I was onboard with that from the beginning, but I understand that a lot of folks probably weren't. (It's one of his lowest-rated films on Letterboxd.) Anyway, I did this a few years ago, but here's my updated ranking of Anderson films (top to bottom): Grand Budapest Hotel Fantastic Mr. Fox French Dispatch Isle of Dogs Rushmore Moonrise Kingdom Bottle Rocket Royal Tenenbaums Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou Asteroid City Darjeeling LimitedThis is interesting. I've come to appreciate Wes Anderson more in the past few years. When his style is combined with a real emotional core, there's almost nothing better, but there is a pretty sharp distinction for me between his sublime films and the others, which are entertaining and quirky but also somewhat hollow and unsatisfying.
1. Rushmore
2. The Grand Budapest Hotel
3. Fantastic Mr. Fox
4. Moonrise Kingdom
5. The Royal Tenenbaums
6. The Life Aquatic
7. The French Dispatch
8. Bottle Rocket 9. Isle of Dogs 10. Darjeeling Limited
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Jun 28, 2023 17:12:10 GMT -8
I've always been a little bit cooler on Into the Spiderverse than the consensus, but I will say I thought the highs of Across the Spiderverse were terrific. I think the fact it was only half a movie bothered me more than it should have considering I'm more of a television guy, but the problem was I find the driving principal of the movie (the canon events) to be complete nonsense, and it is very possible that the second half will convince me otherwise. I also felt like I was watching the movie on 2x speed at points (including how quickly people were talking, I could have used some closed captions). Some of the sequences were astoundingly good though (particularly the opening sequence with Gwen) and I just found everything about the movie more engaging in general that the first one. So I guess in total I'm probably still cooler on it than the majority, but for different reasons. With Into the Spiderverse it was more "I don't see what's so special about this" and Across the Spiderverse it is more "I see what's special about this, but there's stuff that bothers me." I can see your perspective on Spiderverse 1, actually. The narrative and dialogue are a bit too beholden to the superhero movie formula, and some of the jokes don't land. But it was still refreshing in the context of 2018. After 10 years of MCU and DCEU films, one of those things with actual creativity put into it was like a breath of fresh air. A superhero film that truly shatters the conventions of the medium (the way The Maxx and Aeon Flux did in the 90s) has yet to be done, but the Spiderverse films are still a hell of a lot more interesting and entertaining than most. Presumably, that is. I'm seeing the second one shortly.
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Post by Jeremy on Jul 2, 2023 6:24:15 GMT -8
Whoops, the year is more than half over. When did that happen? Anyway, here's some stuff I caught on streaming recently...
Polite Society - The elevator pitch is "What if Bend It Like Beckham by way of Scott Pilgrim, filtered through Jane Austen?" and the answer is surprisingly entertaining. It's got a fun cast (led by a good Priya Kansara in her film debut) and some solid fight scenes that (I assume) pay homage to classic Bollywood action flicks. The film is sold on the prospect of British-Indian women doing kick-flips while wearing glamorous lehengas, and while it sometimes borders on ridiculous (and a few of the jokes too obvious), the tongue-in-cheek humor keeps it loose and entertaining. There's something of a dark sci-fi twist at one point in the movie that doesn't entirely fit with the rest of the story, but the main draw is the action and comedy, and the film delivers on both.
Evil Dead Rise - I had no prior familiarity with the Evil Dead films before this new one was released, but I watched the original trilogy over the past few weeks. It was a lot of fun (#2 in particular), with a great blend of graphic horror and ridiculous comedy. This new film keeps the horror intact (it's one of the most violent new releases I've seen in years), but I found myself missing the humor, particularly once the grossout scares kicked in. A lot of it borders on sadistic, and that would be fine if the film felt like it was having gleeful fun, but up till the last ten minutes, much of it felt too disturbing to be funny. Still, it's entertaining and creative, with some convincing special effects and good performances. There's also a throwaway line about an unborn child having a soul, so I expect PureFlix to scoop up the streaming rights for the film any day now.
Flamin' Hot - It kind of amazes me that this film was released, considering that the central conceit (it's a biopic about a guy who claims to have invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos) was debunked a couple of years ago. Even ignoring that, however, it's simply not a very engaging film - there's barely enough story to sustain 100 minutes, and the whole thing feels kind of muddled in its messaging. (Corporations are racist, you see... but they're also run by CEOs who are kind and well-meaning people. Okay?) To top it all, this film actively rips off Michael Pena's "voiceover" gag from the Ant-Man movies. Then again, since Quantumania frustratingly ignored Pena's character entirely, I guess someone had to take the torch.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jul 22, 2023 4:08:24 GMT -8
So, I did the Barbenheimer double-feature (though I should probably call it Oppenharbie, as I saw the Nolan film first). And what do you know: it actually worked for me!
Margot Robbie's "steak dinner/ice-cream sundae" descriptor was pretty apt.
One of the more surprising things is actually the amount of warmth and humour in the Nolan pic. His films have a rep for being rather cold at times, but while this one opens very loudly (like many of his other movies), Cillian Murphy's Robert Oppenheimer almost instantly comes off as sympathetic, and the film has some genuinely witty verbal interplay amidst all the TENSION. Nolan has had some clunky plot exposition in some of his other pictures, but on the verbal level, Oppenheimer is razor-sharp, despite being extremely talky and 3 hours long. It's smart, complicated adults having thoughtful, self-aware, and at times passive-aggressive conversations with one another. I do think the middle section could've been trimmed a bit, as it hits on the subject of moles/spies so many times that it becomes a bit static for a spell, but damned if this thing doesn't start and finish strong. Much of it is rendered in montage, as well, so you rarely have an instance where any one scene overstays its welcome, which keeps things moving, for the most part. Murphy is terrific, as is Downey (a likely frontrunner for Best Supporting Actor at this stage), and there are really no weak links in the star-studded, extremely-well-cast ensemble.
As for Barbie, it's indeed a very clever and funny examination of gender roles and corporate cynicism. Perhaps a touch more preachy than it needs to be down the stretch -- in one extended rant, a female character lists practically every issue modern women struggle with in order to achieve personal and professional success, while still trying to remain "likeable" to the culture-at-large -- but it's got a light, endearing approach, and it's very entertaining. Structurally, it definitely has echoes of the first Lego Movie -- Will Ferrell's involvement as a silly corporate head draws even more attention to that -- and yeah, it's certainly trying to have-its-cake-and-eat-it-too in scrutinizing corporations like Mattel while still functioning as a toy commercial, but this movie is still far, far better than it has any right to be. Robbie's charming, and Gosling is very much in his comedic wheelhouse as Ken, whose occupation is -- wait for it -- Beach (LMAO!). Good stuff, and it's nice that Greta Gerwig, of all people, has a huge commercial hit on her hands. Hopefully it doesn't drop off too much at the box-office in its second weekend, as these female-oriented blockbusters are often very front-loaded. I suspect the word-of-mouth on this movie will be very good, though, even if it leaves a number of moms scratching their heads as to how any girls under the age of eight would possibly be able to absorb all of this.
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Post by Jeremy on Jul 24, 2023 18:40:37 GMT -8
Will probably be a little while till I get to see Barbie or Oppenheimer, but I am enjoying both the memes and the absolutely bananas box-office numbers. Fourth-biggest weekend ever! Movies are back, baby! (Until they get crippled again by the strike.)
I'm a little bummed that Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning: Part One (did I get all the punctuation right?) didn't register very much on the public - I thought it was perhaps a step down from the last three MI films, but still solid entertainment, with great structure and buildup (each action scene increases in scope and intensity on the one before it) and some terrific-as-expected stuntwork. The key setpiece of the film - Tom Cruise motorcycling off a cliff - is perhaps a little too contrived within the story, but it delivers a great jolt on the big screen. Hayley Atwell is great fun as the series' latest leading lady, and Pom Klementieff steals the show as a Harley Quinn-esque villain who registers quite well despite a minimum of dialogue. Cruise and co. are starting to show their age (Ving Rhames barely does anything this go-round), but the franchise still has a lot of juice, and it looks like they're gearing up to end it on a high note.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jul 25, 2023 11:15:01 GMT -8
I liked the cast of the new Mission: Impossible flick (especially Atwell), but thought it got bogged down in WAY too much unnecessary exposition, particularly in the pre-opening-credits sequence. They explain the basic premise of the film a couple of times, and then proceed to explain it yet another dozen times. I don't really have a problem with the plot of the film being (as you noted on Twitter) "nonsense", but it'd be nice it the movie didn't constantly draw attention to how nonsensical it actually is. It's not really that complicated, folks: sentient AI uses a series of live deepfakes and computer imagery to fool and manipulate multiple high-level governments, and Cruise and Co. are trying to acquire and put together two parts of a key (standard MacGuffin) that will shut it down.
I only really remember two big action sequences in the film, both fairly-well-executed, but extremely derivative in nature. Just the silly (but fun) misadventures in the Fiat, and the runaway train bit (a direct callback to the Brian De Palma original). Anyways, I suspect, much like Avengers: Infinity War (which also had an overabundance of clunky exposition) as it related to Endgame, that the second half of this will be more substantially dramatic, with more memorable and unique set-pieces.
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Post by Jeremy on Jul 25, 2023 16:56:34 GMT -8
Yeah, the first 30 minutes of the film were kind of weak and overly expository (apart from the submarine opener, which was quite tense). The film as a whole could have benefited from a bit of tightening, as there wasn't enough story to justify 163 minutes. But in our Internet age, it seems like a lot of movies are comfy going past the 2.5-hour mark, the better to eat up more viewership hours when the film heads to streaming.
I would also like to call attention to action scene that closes out the second act, with the swordfight on the bridge intercut with Tom Cruise fighting two baddies in a narrow alley. Great use of space in that scene (cutting between an expansive and contracted space) that builds some terrific tension - even if the ending was telegraphed a bit too clearly.
Incidentally, Barbie has now been logged by over 750,000 users on Letterboxd. It'll likely blow past a million at some point this weekend - easily the fastest film to reach that milestone, breaking the record just set by Across the Spider-Verse (which took seven weeks to get a million logs).
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