The Round Eye Gaijin Entertainment Thread

[Topo Chico]

The alt-channel to Fuddbusters where they intend to review guns should end up good. They just started posting here and I'm hopeful. Give it a watch if you're a gunfag for a lawyer and an additive manufacturers opinions on pewpews.

Fuddbusters main channel presently covers the weekly politics/stories in their series "This Week In Guns." Matt is a firearms lawyer who represents some actually prominent 2A cases, his co-host is Ivan a big wig in the 3d printing community subverting gun regulations. I find their commentary on the national goings on pretty great. There are very few qualms I have with them besides a few takes every few episodes that is a straight lolbertarian moment.

 

[Fucking YTs]

So I yo-ho-ho’d the Spiderverse movie as I remembered liking the first one. despite my hatred for capeshit. I had the strangest thing happen while watching it, I don’t remember any of it.

I know I was actively watching it, but beyond the very beginning I couldn’t tell you what happened. I’m not sure if I had a stroke or if the 8.9 rating on IMDB is far too high for this movie.

My wife liked the first one too, and she got up 1/3 of the way through and started cleaning the house while fucking watching TikTok.

 

[PleaseCheckYourReceipts]

So I yo-ho-ho’d the Spiderverse movie as I remembered liking the first one. despite my hatred for capeshit. I had the strangest thing happen while watching it, I don’t remember any of it.

I know I was actively watching it, but beyond the very beginning I couldn’t tell you what happened. I’m not sure if I had a stroke or if the 8.9 rating on IMDB is far too high for this movie.

My wife liked the first one too, and she got up 1/3 of the way through and started cleaning the house while fucking watching TikTok.

While I haven't watched it myself, I've seen enough reviews that I think what you're running into is the fact it's a part 1 and quite a lot of story threads aren't resolved. Thus your brain is just filing it away as incomplete. My understanding is your wife probably checked out at the end of one of the longer tangents in the film, as there are a lot of characters in the film and it seemed to just have enough cohesion to keep it all together. But if you aren't interested in the character they spent 20 minutes on, you're going to get bored.

Also, the first movie caused a shift in the hybrid 2D/3D animation by playing with frame rates a lot. This is just the sequel that "does more". Soundtrack is also not as strong. Does seem like a movie that the sub-15 year olds had a good time with, though it won't have the staying power of the first one. Realistically, it's more like the James Cameron Avatar movies. You had a good time, but do you actually remember much of anything from the movie? At some level, that means you were "entertained", but it wasn't some supremely memorable experience. Thus, it's a solid B in an era where that's a home run from Hollywood.

 

[Fucking YTs]

While I haven't watched it myself, I've seen enough reviews that I think what you're running into is the fact it's a part 1 and quite a lot of story threads aren't resolved. Thus your brain is just filing it away as incomplete. My understanding is your wife probably checked out at the end of one of the longer tangents in the film, as there are a lot of characters in the film and it seemed to just have enough cohesion to keep it all together. But if you aren't interested in the character they spent 20 minutes on, you're going to get bored.

Also, the first movie caused a shift in the hybrid 2D/3D animation by playing with frame rates a lot. This is just the sequel that "does more". Soundtrack is also not as strong. Does seem like a movie that the sub-15 year olds had a good time with, though it won't have the staying power of the first one. Realistically, it's more like the James Cameron Avatar movies. You had a good time, but do you actually remember much of anything from the movie? At some level, that means you were "entertained", but it wasn't some supremely memorable experience. Thus, it's a solid B in an era where that's a home run from Hollywood.

More movies like Bone Tomahawk, please.

No wonder I rarely watch movies anymore. It’s all disposable crap, no matter how much effort was put into it. Also, my wife drifted off immediately to her phone, then to doing stretches, and then to doing house work.

I will give a show like LOST a lot of flack, but if you can get past the shit ending, the journey and a good portion of the characters are good,

 

[PleaseCheckYourReceipts]

More movies like Bone Tomahawk, please.

No wonder I rarely watch movies anymore. It’s all disposable crap, no matter how much effort was put into it. Also, my wife drifted off immediately to her phone, then to doing stretches, and then to doing house work.

I will give a show like LOST a lot of flack, but if you can get past the shit ending, the journey and a good portion of the characters are good,

Have you seen Sisu? Might be up your alley.

That said, I think Glenn's death in S7 of The Walking Dead somehow completely broke most TV & Movies. Obviously, it's about politics and the infiltration of a supremacist cult into the industry, but somehow that's like the hard inflection point. (Was October 2016 when it aired.) Aside from killing the core of the series, it was pretty much after this point that Media lost its purpose of "entertainment". It had to be something "else" to those involved. (i.e. it became subsumed to a culture war) As a result, the stuff that gets released that has some at least some heart is very generic. Nothing attempts any sort of depth with skill.

Though I hear Oppenheimer is quite good.

 

[Realticule]

I think Brendon Buckingham is weird, but at the same time I think this is weird enough to be interesting in a schizo kind of way. It start slow but ends insane.

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

So I didn't plan on seeing anything in theaters until Dune 2 came out but apparently today was National Cinema Day, so tickets were $4 and I went to see Blue Beetle because I'm a sucker for capeshit. I went in expecting early 2000s dogshit that was filled to the brim with political commentary every third sentence based on what I see in the trailer. What I ended up getting was that in spades but nowhere near enough to ruin the film. It wasn't a great or good film, it was just an ok fun film and enjoyed what I got for $4. If I had to pay full ticket price, I likely wouldn't have enjoyed it.

Spoiler: Political Lecturing

Spoiler: White People

The original Blue Bettle, Ted Kord, was just a white dude running around with gadgets like Batman and the new Blue Beetle, Jaime, is a spic running around with an advanced alien robot that merges with the user to create anything he wants. Because of this, I expected a lot of "evil white man is bad and must be replaced by based and morally superior mexican". This never came up and Ted was stated to have been missing for years (which has happened a few times in the comics). They surprisingly don't preach about how evil white people are, in fact they constantly praise Ted Kord and regard him as a great man and a genius in every way. The whole "Batman is a fascist" line from the trailer is actually about this. When they discover Ted Kord's superhero hideout and find out that he was the Blue Beetle, Jaime has no idea who the Blue Beetle is but his uncle Rudy, a super paranoid anti-corporation/surveillance state techie, says the Blue Beetle was a great hero that was before Jaime's time and says how he fought crime like the current superheroes but not as well because his tech was old. Jaime asks if he was like Batman and Rudy says the "Batman is a fascist" line because Batman is so serious while the Blue Beetle was a chill guy that wasn't afraid to crack jokes. If anything, the whole film feels like the studio let some beaners run the production expecting them to shit on white people because they mentioned their other political viewpoints during the film's pitch. What they ended up getting was a film where the only time that race was explicitly mention was about the pride about the protagonist's Mexican background and family.

Spoiler: The main political commentary of the film

To get it out of the way, yes, there is political tones throughout the whole film and it's primarily about Imperialism. They changed the protagonist's backstory of living in El Paso, Texas to living in what's basically the Miami Barrio. There is quite a bit of commentary about how their area is all low-income while all the rich people live on "the other side of the train tracks" where it's filled with skyscrapers stylized like a near-future city. The topic of how evil corporations and the ultra-wealthy are comes up a few times. As Ted Kord is missing, his sister Victoria has taken control of the company and she's the "evil businesswoman/imperialist" that's the primary villain of the film. Funny enough, the characters talk about how "The Kords are all bad people that look down on us" while it's just Victoria Kord because Ted's daughter Jenny becomes Jaime's love interest and they later learn that Ted Kord was "the great hero Blue Beetle".

The theme of imperialism comes up in quite a few other ways. Carapax serves as Victoria's Dragon (main henchman that serves as the major enemy to fight while she's just an evil businesswoman) is another hispanic and not to dig too deep into spoilers at the end of his backstory, he basically represents hispanics being used as tools by imperialists. There's even a portion where Jaime's family has to help him, so Jenny shares some of Ted Kord's old superhero tech to use. Jaime's grandmother helps and she's wielding a fucking laser mini-gun. Her family is surprised she wields so efficiently and their mother mentions Nana's past as a rebel guerilla fighter. Nana is even the one that plans the attack on the main villain's fortress because she sees the blueprints and does the "this isn't my first rodeo" and explains how to use the tunnels and attack the power grid. There's even a point where she's mowing down goons with a crazy smile while screaming "Death to the Imperialists" in Spanish.

As mentioned earlier, a good chunk of the movie is about the "beaner" experience. Jaime's family is mentioned of being illegals like three times. The first when they're afraid to call the police, the second is Rudy mentions Jaime's father taking the family across the border, and the third is when they reveal the Scarab is alien tech and Rudy mentions he doesn't like to use that word [alien]. This is alluded to later when the corpos capture his family and it is done in a way reminiscent of illegals being deported by the police, this film is the definition of "subtle as a brick". The rest of the beaner stuff is fine though as it's mainly "family is everything and family will always be there for you" stuff.

Spoiler: Critique as a film

Spoiler: CGI/Action

The CGI is surprisingly not bad and acceptable unlike the Flash. However a lot of the action/fight sequences happen at night or in poorly lit areas, so it's hard to follow along to the action and a lot of the blows don't have any weight to them. My favorite part is that Jaime is all about "I'm not a killer" while his uncle and grandmother kill probably a dozen goons throughout the film.

Spoiler: General Entertainment

The story is pretty bland and the "capeshit film from the 2000s" holds true here. The character development/growth is very limited and pretty much no one becomes a different person by the end. A lot of the characters are optimists with the "I'll be fine as along as I have family" near the beginning, bad shit happens, they feel down, and then they overcome and they're back to being optimists with that "I'm so happy I have my family". No character defects are resolved. The humor is alright, it's never super hilarious but because it doesn't try too hard, it doesn't fail as hard. The film's comedy at best made me briefly grin or push air through nose. As I mentioned before, I only watched this because it was $4 and I was bored. I'm happy with how that ended up but if I had to pay full price, I would have been a lot more negative.

Spoiler: Potential Sequel Stuff Regarding Ted Kord

They leave a stinger at the end where Ted left a message saying he's alive. As I mentioned before, I was incredibly surprised by how respectful they were to Ted Kord and how much they wanted to treat his character with honor. They show his costume on a mannequin and they are unabashedly faithful to it's design. They lean heavily on the "retro-futuristic 80s" style for the whole presentation of his gadgets, one of his gadgets is literally a Powerglove that makes hard-light constructs (a shield and giant fist). The whole style of his hideout almost feels like an arcade with the lighting and coloring while the computers have that old 80s UI. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason they give for Ted's absence in the potential sequel is "Booster Gold took me through time and he fucked up, so now I'm here like 40 years later. It would allow them to hire an actor that isn't in his 50s+ for Ted so he can still do crimefighting, while also setting up some "Blue and Gold" shenanigans.

TLDR: It's ok, nothing I'd be super excited about and general schlock you can feed your normie beaner relatives/girlfriends. If you don't care much for capeshit, don't bother. If you've been indoctrinated into enjoying capeshit for decades by a steady upbringing of comics and animated shows, you're best off waiting to pirate it when it comes out on digital release than buying the ticket price.

EDIT: I just found out that the film was originally made to be launched directly on HBOMax and then the new CEO decided to give it a theatrical release, so everything about this film makes sense. If this film just showed up on my HBOMax, I'd be perfectly fine with it and it's why I could enjoy the film with that $4 ticket price.

 

[MrProcessor]

More movies like Bone Tomahawk, please.

No wonder I rarely watch movies anymore. It’s all disposable crap, no matter how much effort was put into it. Also, my wife drifted off immediately to her phone, then to doing stretches, and then to doing house work.

I will give a show like LOST a lot of flack, but if you can get past the shit ending, the journey and a good portion of the characters are good,

I really liked Bone Tomahawk. If I want to watch another movie like Bone Tomahawk, it will probably be a really old Spaghetti Western probably one in the Django series. Which reminds me that I really need to track down Django the Bastard.

Of course, I'd also like to see more modern movies like Bone Tomahawk, but I think movies like that are pretty rare. I should see what the director of that is up to. Oh, according to Wikipedia his next film after that is, Brawl in Cell Block 99.

Oh, aside from being a director, S. Craig Zahler is also a writer, the next Western of his to be adapted, this time directed by Ridley Scott, is Wraiths of the Broken Land.

 

[Realticule]

Fun fact, Glengarry Glen Ross is free with "ads" on Youtube

 

[The Rrat]

I watched The Digital Cicus pilot episode. It was mid, at best.

 

[Realticule]

I watched The Digital Cicus pilot episode. It was mid, at best.

I had to look that up, I only know it because of fuck ups on the Internet talking about the clown woman. Why has the Internet become this?

 

[The Rrat]

I had to look that up, I only know it because of fuck ups on the Internet talking about the clown woman. Why has the Internet become this?

Idk. I kept seeing the fucking clown woman, so I watched it with no expectations. It was nothing special.

 

[PleaseCheckYourReceipts]

I'll toss it in this thread since it's available in Western Cinema right now, but I highly recommend Godzilla Minus One. One of the best films I've seen in a long time. Third Act does suffer a little from their budget constraints, but Evil Godzilla is quite the sight & existential dread you'd hope it is. Main guy acts the hell out of the role, as well.

 

[Kazuma]

Just saw Godzilla Minus One in the theater. It's really fucking good.

 

[PleaseCheckYourReceipts]

Just saw Godzilla Minus One in the theater. It's really fucking good.

It can get a little wonky in the 3rd Act, but it's one of the best movies I've seen in ages. And it's a GREAT theater experience. Also, the remade, classic Godzilla theme hits hard in the film.

 

[Empty_Inbox]

Scavengers Reign is an animated series on Max. Set in future on a distant world; plot follows several people, who survived a crash in their emergency pods and now trying to get out. The planet is full of strange and alien liveforms, mysterious and often dangerous - sometimes in weird ways, sometimes very directly.



Art style is what caught my eye, as the alien landscape is impressively bizzare. Reminds me of Moebius' art, perhaps intentionally, since that artist is an inspiration for numerous creators around the world.

EDIT: Oh, almost forgot. The animated show was based on a short film "Scavengers", that was released in 2016. Characters and plot are different since it is a single episode.

 

[Stunned But Dumb]

Wasn't sure where to post this but

Rooster Teeth Is Shutting Down After 21 Years

Rooster Teeth is being shut down by parent Warner Bros. Discovery, after unsuccessful attempts to sell the unprofitable entertainment division.

variety.com

Rooster Teeth is getting gone, guys. It's been teetering for years and the last rope just got cut. The shows and such like RWBY are getting their rights shopped around.

 

[Awoogers]

Wasn't sure where to post this but

Rooster Teeth Is Shutting Down After 21 Years

Rooster Teeth is being shut down by parent Warner Bros. Discovery, after unsuccessful attempts to sell the unprofitable entertainment division.

variety.com

Rooster Teeth is getting gone, guys. It's been teetering for years and the last rope just got cut. The shows and such like RWBY are getting their rights shopped around.

 

[ogey_rrat]

Anyone been watching the new Shogun remake? I hear it's pretty good so far.