It's a well known trope, I didn't coin the term. And according to TV Tropes he plays affably evil by the numbers:

#feelingsball

lol, k I'm finished.

Walk Among the Tombstones - average movie; but I could watch Liam be in roles like this everyday. Enjoyed it.

Just went to see The Imitation Game.

Thought Cumberbatch & Knightly played really well together. As always with "based on a true story" movies, I couldn't help trying to figure out how many characters/situations were thrown in/timing of events changed to try to raise the tension.

I'll have to do some more research; maybe they stayed close to reality. Anyway, definitely worth a watch, but I wouldn't rush out to see it.

The closest movie theater to me has the servers running each movie on display in a little glass room. It's pretty cool.

I'm sure a lot of people here have seen Eastern Promises, does anyone have any cool anecdotes, or insight into this movie? Any scary encounters irl with Russian mobsters?

I just watched the original Bad News Bears for the first time in like 25 years.
Man, what a great, great movie.

There's no way they could do an honest remake today

Thankfully Rush is an Australian actor so his accent is completely authentic.

i know this doesn't belong here but no idea where i would post it so w/e.

randomly stumbled across the POG movie studio draft in 2010.
so awesome, really tilted i never go into POG and didn't get to participate.
what a great idea for a draft.

i know we just did a film themed draft so this would have to wait a while for people to want to do another one, but what to people think about a draft of "best adaptation of a novel"

where you first select which novel you want to adapt then round by round select all the diff people involved in making the adaptation.

so you draft the novel, the person who is going to write the adaptation, directors, editors, actors, etc....

obv once someone is drafted they are off the board.

would anyone be interested in something like this anytime soon?

open to any suggestions/changes.

Whiplash was great. Kind of expected that I would like it, but even with the expectations, it delivered.

I'll do it. Will the first round be novel? Or can you draft the novel later

i think 1st round should be novel.

will be more fun as the draft unfolds to be able to explain why each pick will work so great for the adaptation etc and that can't happen if people can't disclose what novel they've chosen.

and since its so unlikely there is going to be a huge overlap in the novels people want to draft, strategy wise you'd be way better off waiting to pick the novel in the late rounds.
so i think it makes the most sense to make it mandatory to select it with your first pick.

but i think for this since everyone should know what novel they want coming in the time limit should be much shorter for that pick.

maybe we'll have everyone participating PM their selection to someone who volunteers (not participating) and as long as there are no duplicates the list can be published all at once so we can skip right to drafting the rest of the spots.

obv some books will have a ton of characters so for sake of brevity we'll say the draft will only be for essential characters (we don't need to know who you want to play orphan #9 in your adaptation of oliver twist).

but i'm open to all suggestions about formats etc.

if there is enough interest i'll start a new thread for signups and get it rolling.

i'd be cool with just drafting 4-5 novels to be made into movies as a studio. we can all play james franco

that's one option but personally I think it will be much more interesting to see the choices people make in terms of cast n crew and imagining what that adaptation would look like on the screen.

I don't think there would be many "aha that's awesome" moments seeing which novels ppl want made into films.

also remember once someone is drafted they're off the table so you might have your ideal director/actor/DP team and then have to scramble to come up with a new vision at the last moment (much like the actual process of making a film).

but whatever ppl are most interested in doing works for me.

after the draft a thread of "top 10 novels you want to see made into films" could be great.

I'm passing out, if people are interested anyone is welcome to make a new sign up thread or whatever you don't have to wait for me to wake up.

Cool draft idea. Very creative.

The reason I think more novels would be cool is that it would bridge the discussion between writing and film and perhaps spark some people's interest in either.

Also, nonfiction could be a cool direction

I'd be interested in this, but not free for the next week or so

Women Aren't Funny

Documentary on netflix. This was a huge disappointment. Bonnie Macfarlane tries to convince us that women are indeed funny. She was a contestant on Last Comic Standing and ended up marrying one of the judges that season, the very funny Rich Vos. She has been touring with him and being used as his opening act for awhile and wanted to do something to break out.

In this documentary she goes through the perception that there just aren't that many funny female comics and by the end, she almost had me convinced. She interviews the likes of Rita Rudner, Sarah Silverman, Joan Rivers, and many others to talk about their struggle with being a woman in comedy. This had plenty of potential, but needed a different woman at the helm.

At one point, she interviews the hilarious Maria Bamford, who apparently has a website where she has a list of funny female comics, and Macfarlane confronts her on not being on the list. You could see the wheels turning in Maria's head being like "but you're not funny." Macfarlane is a mediocre comedian who has been getting gigs because of who she's married to, and it showed. There were a bunch of "bits" in the movie that didn't work, like her pretending to be an investigative reporter with no pants on, using the third person in voice-overs, and even an embarrassing stunt where she dresses up as a guy and tries to do stand up (she bombs).

Many male comics are taken completely out of context, like Patrice O'neal who at the beginning makes the claim that women aren't funny but by the end of the documentary, he goes into a laundry list of all the female comics who he loves. Vos seems like a decent guy who knows his wife isn't funny and that the documentary is garbage but is being supportive the whole time.

The film had no direction or structure, whereas a documentary like Heckler, where Jamie Kennedy goes through the culture of being heckled as a comic, had a definite beginning, middle and end. Women Aren't Funny leads up to Macfarlane finally being the headline of a comedy club, where she uses her 3 year old daughter as a prop and swears at her for a cheap laugh.

Sarah Silverman makes the antiquated claim that the only role they are giving to women in comedic movies was like her role in "School of Rock" where she tells the goofy lovable lead to get a job. Now that we have stars like Kristen Wiig in "Bridesmaids," or Rose Byrne in "Neighbors," I don't think that stereotype necessarily is true anymore.

Comedy is a male dominated world, but there are plenty of very talented and funny female comics. Unfortunately this documentary does not help that argument.

Whiplash was great.

I liked Predestination but was sad they changed the great title of Heinlein's short story "All You Zombies". They kept it in as a line of dialogue but the new title is pretty limp.

does the Mexican Mafia count?

Given that the film doesn't feature any actual zombies, I disagree with you. General audiences would think something with zombies in the title is going to feature actual zombies. It was smart to change the title to something that instantly communicates the essence of the story.

Predestination

We all remember the classic scene from Heat where the character of Robert De Niro sits down and chats with the Al Pacino. Cop meets bad guy. Face to face. Nothing separating them, except a moral code. One that Al Pacino most maintain in order to not feel his world collapsing, as he curiously likes Robert De Niro almost as much as he likes himself...



Great movie.