Apparently not…
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Nice!
(It would have been even more impressive if the whole lead-up was done in the same shot.)
Discover the intricacy behind one of the best timed shots in television history
With a description like that, I was anticipating something more complicated than I’d imagined (which was a fairly obvious “we practiced what we were was going to do, timed it carefully, and then started that many seconds ahead of the launch”). It turned out it was exactly that. It’s unquestionably awesome, and they must have been over the moon when they watched it back, but it’s really not very intricate : )
I mean, this is more intricate than that. (n.b. this nonchalant shot is so unnecessarily complicated for a board game review video. I love it.)
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Slightly OT, but this was genuine serendipity:
The photographer had planned to use up his last two exposures on his test-pilot neighbour flying a Lightning…
On the topic of films, I still have a soft spot for Last Action Hero. Not perfect, could have been so much more if it had had the guts to explore its ideas, but even so, some of Arnie’s best acting.
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Also Jamie Lee Curtis…
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The trained dogs joke is one of my favourite all time jokes.
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You may be thinking of True Lies? I’m not as much of a fan of that; it’s a good Arnie film and I can enjoy it as I enjoy Commando (nearly comfort-watching) and Predator and so on, but it’s a rubbish James Cameron film after two Terminators, Aliens and The Abyss.
And the visible framework they’re standing on…
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You’d be very right. I have indeed got mixed up.
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Oh gosh, old SU&SD. And Paul… sigh…
Modern SU&SD is better. It’s just better… but gosh those old reviews had some kind of magic to them, didn’t they?
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I binged all of Severance this weekend. Can definitely recommend.
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Last night I managed to wrangle my partner into seeing the 1999 version of The Mummy, which continues to be exactly as joyous and fun as I remember it.
Andy says she enjoyed how campy it is. A fair point. Plotholes of a size and breadth that it would annoy me no end in modern films, but I’ll forgive it here.
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Watched Metal Lords on Saturday night. It was fun, if not deserving the hype I had seen going around. It has a few moments that make you cringe, but overall, quite enjoyable, although more for an afternoon than a night watch, I’d say.
Then on Sunday, I had the craves for an Easter epic, and sadly, there’s hardly anything available, so I had to watch Gladiator, which is way too new, but still enjoyable. At least I am glad I watched it, as Netflix is removing it from their list here in NZ mid-May
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Finished up The Book of Boba Fett last night, which was enjoyable overall. I was a little put out by episodes 5 and 6 essentially being episodes of The Mandalorian. I mean, Fett wasn’t even in ep 5 at all! Bit other than that, I thought it was okay. Figures that since Boba Fett is such a popular character, Disney wants to redeem him and make him someone more heroic.
Also finished the first season of Star Wars: Rebels, which had a pretty strong finish to it. Partly due to the three parter finale, making the episodes directly connected rather than the somewhat stand-alone episodes that preceded it.
Continuing my re-watch of the formerly Netflix Marvel shows. Finished S1 of Luke Cage today and will move on to S1 of Iron Fist. After that and The Defenders, I will be up to S1 of The Punisher which a few episodes into it is where we left off, so I will be watching new stuff after that.
Lastly, this weekend we watched The Adam Project which was good! Walker Scobell nailed his portrayal of a young Ryan Reynolds, and there were some really touching moments in the film.
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We’re rewatched Episode II, III, Solo and Rogue One recently. Episode I was also watched but that was some time ago, I needed a break from Jarjar.
Two of those movies were good Star Wars, one was excellent and one creeped me out in a major way that I do not remember from previous viewings. The worst of it was that scene in the meadow that is so very popular with meme makers. Ouch. It’s so creepy I am still thinking about it a week after watching the movie.
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I wonder if anyone in the editing suite would have dared say ‘Er, George… was creepy the vibe you were going for?’
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My partner and I recently finished watching the MCU Movies in Chronological/Timeline order. We had seen a few of them before, but most of them were new to us.
Captain America: The First Avenger (Timeline: 1942) – We had seen this one before. Pretty fun. I like Red Skull’s car; I would totally drive that to the grocery store.
Captain Marvel (Timeline: 1995) – Neither of us were previously aware of the Captain Marvel character (get used to me typing this, it’s going to happen a lot). Thoroughly surprised by the plot. Acting was really good, I thought, from a broad cast.
Iron Man (Timeline: 2010) – one of my parnter’s favorite movies of all time. Always fun to watch.
Iron Man 2 (Timeline: 2011) – another we had already seen. Not as good as the first, but a reminder that my life needs more Sam Rockwell (this role, Zaphod Beeblebrox, and Guy Fleegman mostly)
The Incredible Hulk (Timeline: 2011) – Not a particularly fitting role for Ed Norton and there was a lot of story shoehorned into a short movie. Predictable, but fun.
Thor (Timeline: 2011) – Meh. I guess it’s fine. Most of the characters don’t seem believable.
The Avengers (Timeline: 2012) – Good story development despite so many big characters sharing the screen.
Iron Man 3 (Timeline: 2012) – Definitely the weakest of the 3 Iron Man movies. But we knew that going in.
Thor: The Dark World (Timeline 2013) – Meh. Less good than the first Thor, which was already Meh.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Timeline: 2014) – I was quite surprised by this one. I didn’t know anything about it going in and thought it was quite well written. Some obvious hand-waving was required to make it all work, but that seems to have all be sufficiently swept under the rug.
Guardians of the Galaxy (Timeline: 2014) – we had already seen this one. Great soundtrack (obviously), and still a fun ride.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 (Timeline: 2014) – we had also already seen this one. Story wasn’t as good as the first one, but the character development was better.
Avengers: Age of Ultron (Timeline: 2015) – it’s fine, I guess. I feel like it was a bit forced in order to introduce tension into the MCU. A lot of 2-dimensional characters that had previously felt more real.
Ant-Man (Timeline: 2015) – my partner really likes Paul Rudd, who is also a Kansas City native; yet we both underestimated this going in. It felt… different than the rest of the MCU. But we really enjoyed it, even if it does do a lot of quasi-science hand-waving.
Captain America: Civil War (Timeline: 2016) – I feel like this was also forced, and some of the characters seem less authentic. Still, I was expecting to not enjoy it at all and it was still entertaining.
Black Widow (Timeline: 2016) – it started very slow and I wasn’t sure I was going to get into it. But it was poignant, thoughtful, and funny, surely a hard combination of feelings to evoke. We were notified to not watch the post-credits scene, as it would be a spoiler, so if you do the same timeline-order viewing, this is the only post-credits scene that you have to avoid.
Spider-Man: Homecoming (Timeline: 2016) – a pretty uneven movie. I liked parts of it, while other parts were either lackluster or just irrelevant. I understand the character direction for Peter Parker/Spiderman, but it was laid on too-thick (perhaps as a meta-approach to conveying the nature of the character?)
Doctor Strange (Timeline: 2016-2017) – we had seen this already and both really enjoyed it. Easily one of my favorite MCU characters (sarcastic, wry wit? Inflated ego? Insistent that he’s always right? Put me next to Doctor Strange and my partner may not be able to tell us apart 
)
Black Panther (Timeline: 2016-2017) – one that neither myself nor my partner had any expectations for, as we knew nothing of the characters or setting. It was so good.
Thor: Ragnarok (Timeline: 2017) – surprisingly, my favorite of the Thor movies. Throughout the MCU, I’m constantly confused by Thor’s character development. Maybe there’s something I’m missing for having not read the comics?
Avengers: Infinity War (Timeline: 2017) – For a movie this big with so many big characters, it’s pretty good. But not great. I would have been pretty upset if I had gone to see it in theatres because it’s quite clearly a Part 1
Ant-Man and the Wasp (Timeline: 2017) – A fun romp. Again, it feels different than the rest of MCU; and this time it felt different than the first Ant-Man. I liked it, but not as much as the first Ant-Man.
Avengers: Endgame (Timeline: 2017-2022) – A really long movie about very, very little. MCU Fan Service, the movie, I think. Still, there were some surprises and the ending was, obviously, epic. and sad 
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Timeline: 2023) – another one we went into with no prior knowledge of the characters or background. Definitely one of our favorites. A lot of interesting character development in the same runtime as all the other MCU movies.
Spider-Man: Far From Home (Timeline: 2023) – I feel like Tom Holland’s Spider-Man really becomes a fully-developed character in this movie. Definitely our favorite of the Spider-Man movies. A fun twist on some tired tropes, for sure.
Eternals (Timeline: 2023) – exasperatingly stale. A character-driven plot with thousands-year-old characters that are essentially two-dimensional, despite the story explicitly telling us that they are not. I’m not sure what could have saved it; perhaps if it was a mini-series instead of a movie.
Spider-Man: No Way Home (Timeline: 2024) – fairly meh. Mostly fan-service I think. I really enjoyed Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man movies, but I had no familiarity with Andrew Garfield’s. Great performances by some of the returning villains, but ultimately a let down.
Now that we’re done with the currently-available MCU movies, we’ve started watching Loki – currently two episodes in and still not sure what to think, other than “old Owen Wilson looks more like Owen Wilson than young Owen Wilson ever did”. First episode was better than the second. We’ll see how it goes.
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Creepy is a pretty accurate descritpion of Lucas’s stuff.
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Partially its because Chris Hemsworth threatened to quit unless they allowed him to stretch his comic chops
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I’ve ranted a lot about this to my partner, but my first step would be to actually adapt the Eternals.
I’m not saying they have to be 100% accurate to the plot, but just keeping basic stuff like:
- how the Eternals + Deviants were created (they’re a science experiment)
- what their powers actually are (Sersi being unable to transmute people is ridiculous, considering that’s all the mythological character she’s based on does!)
- what the Celestials are doing with Earth (they’re checking up on their experiment, and destroying it if they don’t like it)
- the fact that the Deviants are actually people
It should be bombastic sci-fi nonsense with opportunities for crazy character/costume/set design.
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I just finished season 6 of Inside No. 9. As a dedicated fan of The Twilight Zone and other anthology shows, it was right up my street. I really enjoyed it. Now I need Amazon to bring season 7 Stateside when it’s finished!
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I watched Red Notice, another “Ryan Reynolds being Ryan Reynolds” movie, but now staring Dwayne Johnson as himself, and Gal Gadot as herself.
That’s unfair. Aside from Reynolds, who absolutely has a type-cast issue (not a complaint, I love the one character he plays, but I know he’s got more range than this… even Free Guy showed more acting chops), everyone on the cast was between average and good. A predictable twist, sure, and a few too many “Okay, no, that’s pushing my suspension of disbelief too far”, but again, I feel that’s more on me for expecting too much “sense” from a functionally mindless, witty action film. I guess if I had to nitpick, it’s that the film presents itself like a heist film but doesn’t deliver on that. It’s almost pure action.
Still, a fun romp overall despite my old-man-shakes-fist-at-cloud complaints.
I really wanted a heist, though. I’ll have to comb through Netflix again, see if I can find a good one. Or a really satisfying cyberpunk… oooh, maybe the new Bladerunner. I have heard it is surprisingly good.
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