[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

Originally Posted by MoriartyL

[SPOILER]It's perfectly obvious that the [DS9] writers had no clue where they were going at any step during the way. That is no way to write a long-form story. If you want plot, you watch Babylon 5. You don't watch DS9.

Absolutly. The B5 arc was predefined (at least in skeleton form) and kept true to that. Well done.

I would like to add that there was closure to ST:TNG in some way. There was a lot of loose ends not tied up, and closing the series as it opened (with Q) was an easy slam dunk, but at least there was some closure to the series as well as many relationships in the series.

[kuze]

Adventureland - It is a good movie, it really is. But as I rarely watch teen dramas I was spoiled by Dazed and Confused, the absolute masterpiece by Linklater, one of my favourite movies ever. Adventureland couldn't live up to it, and I really did have high hopes for this one. Maybe I couldn't relate to any of the guys, or maybe I just didn't buy the ending, but something just didn't feel right. Also, the music in the credits was awful and didn't fit the mood at all.

[Henke]

Originally Posted by Gazzoid

Drag Me to Hell

This is a pretty entertaining horror film. Saw this today after i had my very first tattoo done. Just like Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films there's dark/gross humour present and there are enough jump-out-of-your-seat moments to boot. The plot's pretty basic and straightford to follow, but it's entertaining to see what's in store for Christine Brown whilst she's stalked by a powerful demon named Lamia.

4/5

I finally saw it too, great movie.

It had a lot of suprising "jump out from a corner and say boo"-moments which is standard in todays Horror-movies and not really to my liking. This is the first movie I've seen in which it worked wonderfully. Foremost because in between there were more of a drama story where you got to know the characters and when the scary scenes finally came they were really tense and long.

The wait for a Evil Dead 4 is finally over.

[Lucien21]

Ice Age 3

The loveable mammoth and his friends are back. Mrs Mammoth is currently with child (why are animated threequals always about babies).

Sid the sloth finds some eggs and when they hatch into dinosaurs it leads to him being kidnapped and the rest of the motley crew go in rescue.

It was pretty decent 3D movie with some decent laughs and with Simon Pegg's new mad weasel character, pretty fun.

6/10

[Lucien21]

Adventureland

Uptight, geeky college graduate is forced to work summer at a local theme park (Adventureland) and learns about love and life.

Has a couple of biggish names in Kristen Stewart (Twilight) and Ryan Reynolds (Wolverine).

It's a sweet and charming coming of age story set in the 80's.

7/10

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

The Cooler: William H. Macy delivers as usual. Odd film, but no matter what you think of the ending, it's engrossing.

[Fantasysci5]

I just saw "Gran Torino". It was freakin' hilarious, how he'd just insult everybody.

[geggis]

Originally Posted by Fantasysci5

I just saw "Gran Torino". It was freakin' hilarious, how he'd just insult everybody.

Ieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

...

...first post!

Gran Torino was great - though my partner couldn't stop laughing at Clint Eastwoods gruff singing over the credits. My biggest gripe was that the young boys acting was perhaps the worst I've ever seen, made worse by the excellent performance given by Clint.

I finally got round to watching The Assassination of Jesse James last week. Quite a sad tale for different reasons than the title would imply!

[Lucien21]

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Film six of the series is about hormones and teenagers.

With Voldemort abscent from the film the film concentrates on who is copping off with whom and who is upset with a lack of action.

Teenage hormones and romances. Oh those were the days.

Anywhooo not much happens in film 6. We see some Voldemort flashbacks, Draco moping about (presumably because he's not getting in on all this snogging - oh and his secret mission), The tangled love lifes of the main cast and a quiddich match.

Basically all just setting up the finale.

The film looked fantastic, the actors more or less fit the parts now (Snape is the best of course) and there was some cool CGI (Dumbledore goes all Gandalf at one point).

Twas ok, but nowhere near the best film and the finale had strangely less impact than the previous deaths (there should have been tears in the cinema, but nobody seemed bothered).

7/10

[Ninja Dodo]

Went and saw the new Potter. Maybe it helped that it's been a while since I read book six, but I enjoyed this one a lot more than film 4 and 5. I thought Hogwarts looked more like the Hogwarts from the first two movies which was good (never liked the overly Gothic one up in the mountains), and Gambon had grown more into the role of Dumbledore.

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

Liberty Heights: This is an interesting Barry Levinson (Wag the Dog, Good Morning, Vietnam) film, a look at anti-semitism, racism, class-system of the mid-50s in the USA for coming of age boys looking forward to college as high-school wraps up. This was a well-put-together drama with a immersive screenplay.

Brokeback Mountain: this finally bubbled up on my queue. Every aspect of this film was excellent, the acting, dialog, photography, and visualisation of what it would be like to have such a strong relationship as theirs in the environment and the time. There were a few moments when I felt that Jake strained a bit too much to be that cowboy, but Heath was perfect.

Heavenly Creatures. Wow. I had to get up the next morning to re-watch the ending to see if it was as ... (removing spoiler terminology) 'strong' as I remembered from the night before. This early Peter Jackson film, with the debut of Kate Winslet, is the telling of a true-life drama/crime story that pits two fast friends against the family and culture that schemes to keep them apart. Special treat: the film opens with a few minutes of real film reel (heh) NZ metro (I forget the name of the city) of the era, all prim and proper with their hats and bicycles, to set the scene for the world the girls live in then. Jackson and Walsh took on the task of telling this tale and on all fronts, they made a great impression.

[Fantasysci5]

Originally Posted by Not A Speck Of Cereal

Liberty HeightsBrokeback Mountain

I remember when we watched this in class, no joke. I was in a "Film Analysis" class, and we were watching some movies from the same director. I remember all of the girls in the class were all excited and giggly to be watching it, and all of the boys wished they would have skipped class that day.

[Jelena]

I watched Walk the Line the other day and it boosted my interest in Johnny Cash, someone I earlier hadn't listened to or known much about. I was deeply moved by the way June stood by Johnny's side and helped him through his drug addiction and I notice I can't get his music out of my head.

And that accent of June's is just great! I could listen to it for hours.

[DustyShinigami]

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

T'was good. I'd say i enjoyed it more than the Order of the Phoenix. There was too much content missing from that one. Actually, i'd say i enjoyed both Order and Half-Blood about the same.
As already mentioned, this one did lack action compared to the previous ones. All thanks to the character's hormones and love lives getting in the way. But at least there was more humour present and dialogue between the characters. Again, some scenes were missing whilst others were added. I thought the cornfield scene, with the Death Eaters, was pointless. I don't even recall that happening in the novel. But the most important scenes were kept in tact and were pretty faithful.

Overall: 3.5/5

[AndreaDraco83]

Originally Posted by Gazzoid

I thought the cornfield scene, with the Death Eaters, was pointless. I don't even recall that happening in the novel.

It wasn't there. And when I saw it, I was speechless. Why on Earth should the Death Eaters destroy The Burrow at that point? So much for Voldemort keeping a low profile! Anyway, I didn't like the movie: as Gazzoid put it, "the character hormones" were too much emphasized by the script, in a way that reminded me more of a teen drama than Harry Potter. I don't have anything against teen dramas, and in fact I watch and enjoy many of them, but this kind of tone sounds to me utterly wrong when applied to the Harry Potter's universe.

At least, the movie is visually stunning and the musical score really great. All in all, I would say 5.5/10

[DustyShinigami]

Originally Posted by AndreaDraco83

It wasn't there. And when I saw it, I was speechless. Why on Earth should the Death Eaters destroy The Burrow at that point? So much for Voldemort keeping a low profile!

Not only that, but

Spoiler:

i thought it was going to be a scene whereby Fenrir Greyback was going to be introduced properly. So much for that. Then of course The Burrow is, more-or-less, where the beginning of the Deathly Hallows takes place. Right before Harry, Ron and Hermine begin their journey to find the Horcruxes. The Half-Blood Prince movie didn't even show or explain what happened to the Weasleys, or their house, after those events. Did they rebuild it by hand or by magic? If not, then where will they live? This may get rectified in the next movie.

But how will this be handled?

Spoiler:

In the Order of the Phoenix movie, Sirius Black didn't even give Harry that piece of mirror. That item is very important, if i remember correctly, as it helped Harry find one of the Horcruxes in Deathly Hallows (if i got this wrong then feel free to correct me). I'm curious how they'll tackle that. No doubt it won't be as satisfying.

[AndreaDraco83]

Originally Posted by Gazzoid

Spoiler:

In the Order of the Phoenix movie, Sirius Black didn't even give Harry that piece of mirror. That item is very important, if i remember correctly, as it helped Harry find one of the Horcruxes in Deathly Hallows (if i got this wrong then feel free to correct me). I'm curious how they'll tackle that. No doubt it won't be as satisfying.

Spoiler:

Actually the mirror allowed Harry to see Aberforth Dumbledore's eye and to get to him, at the Hog's Head, if I'm not mistaken. From there, Harry is able to sneak in into Hogwarts to retrieve the Ravenclaw's Horcrux.

On the other hand,

Spoiler:

I highly doubt that the next movie will feature the wedding of Bill and Fleur, so I don't think that they will bother to explain what happened to The Burrow. I may be wrong, but they never introduced Bill Weasley in the movies and Fleur didn't even appeared in this one. What really bothers me is that I already know that Viktor Krum and even Gabrielle Delacour (!!!) will be featured and now I'm asking myself: If not with Bill and Fleur's wedding, how the hell are they going to bring these characters together?

[DustyShinigami]

Originally Posted by AndreaDraco83

Spoiler:

Actually the mirror allowed Harry to see Aberforth Dumbledore's eye and to get to him, at the Hog's Head, if I'm not mistaken. From there, Harry is able to sneak in into Hogwarts to retrieve the Ravenclaw's Horcrux.

I really need to re-read the book. Thanks for clarifying.

Spoiler:

I highly doubt that the next movie will feature the wedding of Bill and Fleur, so I don't think that they will bother to explain what happened to The Burrow. I may be wrong, but they never introduced Bill Weasley in the movies and Fleur didn't even appeared in this one.What really bothers me is that I already know that Viktor Krum and even Gabrielle Delacour (!!!) will be featured and now I'm asking myself: If not with Bill and Fleur's wedding, how the hell are they going to bring these characters together?

No. Bill has never been introduced. And you're right

Spoiler:

i highly doubt they'll have Bill and Fleur's wedding in the next one. But why bring back Viktor Krum and Gabrielle Delacour!? What would be the point of that? That's one of the problems with these movie adaptions - they miss out characters completely, they introduce them in one movie then disappear completely after that, or they suddenly crop up again and don't serve much of a purpose. At least in the books all the characters seem to have more of a purpose, have more background and have proper closure.

[Fantasysci5]

Originally Posted by AndreaDraco83

Spoiler:

I highly doubt that the next movie will feature the wedding of Bill and Fleur

Spoiler:

If they can't even put in that bit scene about Lupin and Tonks together, they better not do this! lol I'm also wondering if we're going to hear about Tonks and Lupin having a baby, and etc, since they seem to love cutting out all of the scenes with them and basically making them 1-dimensional characters.

[Trunkyo]

My sister and I (along with a friend's daughter) also went to see HP and the Half-Blood Prince yesterday. It was enjoyable enough (not as good as Goblet of Fire or Chamber of Secrets but better than Order of the Phoenix and Prisoner of Azkaban.) Being the only one who actually read all the books, I wound up having to explain to the others what was changed or left out. The teen drama and angst didn't bother me as much, although Lavender Brown's behaviour was too TGGG ("Teenage Giggly Girl Groupie") for me.

Jim Broadbent was excellent as Horace Slughorn, although I had imagined him looking more rotund with a bushy mustache (like in Topsy Turvy). Then again, I always pictured Dame Edna as Rita Skeeter! Oh well.

The part where

Spoiler:

Draco disarmed Dumbledore

happened so fast that most people are going to forget by HP8 just how important this seemingly insignificant act will be! (Yes, there's going to be a HP8, since Deathly Hallows will be split into two films.) Even the part where the Half-Blood Prince was revealed felt rushed ("BTW, I'm the HBP... see ya!" )

I'll also echo everyone else about too many characters not having enough screen time (Lupin, Tonks, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Neville, Prof. McGonagall. etc.)