ThaOGDreamWeaver

If only work'd give me the budget...

Trying out PlaygroundAI's RealVis XL settings... DW, looking classy (though I can almost never get it to put the spiderweb design over the chest...) Ranger Emily, looking pensive (why do the eyes come out tinted?) ...and Captain Thunder - oddly, the hardest one to instruct on (not least "how do I remove the weird spoiler thing from the back?) But other than that... yep. We like.

Deadpool has always been a parody comic that still exists as part of the Marvel canon, sort-of. And if there's a genre that deserves to be parodied, it's cape movies. And their fandom. Where the two Deadpool movies fell down is that they have more-or-less recognisable plot arcs, with emotional beats that more or less make sense, in between all the fart gags. And Celine Dion. So they are perhaps better than their subject matter deserves.

Oddly, IMDB did a "making of" documentary series on it which is still live on their site. Perhaps one day it'll be a case study.

Studio rewrite? Out of curiosity, I've just had a look at IMDB. There are two fairly obvious pairs of writers credited: The writer/director, Brit TV journeywoman director SJ Clarkson, and a Brit writer called Claire Pearson - responsible for the brilliant and quite mindbending Life On Mars (the OG version with the Quattro, not the US remake), and also Spooks - a dark and slightly grimy Brit MI5 series (find it on Britbox if you can.) The other writers are... Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, whose highly esteemed credits include but are not limited to: the recent Power Rangers movie, Gods of Egypt, and a little charmer that went quite viral called Morbius. Sazama and Sharpless are also listed under Story, which would be the original pitch that got the greenlight. (Incidentally, Sazama is also on an IMDB user generated list called Hack Writers.) Which leads me to think the following. This is pure conjecture, but. 1) Sazama and Sharpless, among others, are hired to develop a batch load of Marvel properties to build out the Spideyverse before Sony has to hand back the keys. Possibly at bulk rates. 2) Morbius gets filmed and released. About which we know, and about which Matt Smith will happily tell you if you get him drunk enough. So here he is shirtless. 3) No-one in their right mind would touch this property after what happened with Morbius. So they have to hire in a fresh-faced Brit, excited to step up from TV to a big motion picture. 4) Clarkson finds out what she's got herself into slightly after accepting the gig - given filming schedules, possibly Morbius hadn't come out yet - and calls in a friend to help do a desperate attempt at a rewrite. Which... doesn't work either, or gets edited back towards the greenlit version. 5) If I'm even slightly right, I would 100% pay to see Emily Blunt and Ruth Wilson double-head a thinly-disguised movie about the making of this movie. Because it would be a whole lot funnier.

Neko Fuzz & Raizon - Catisfaction Happy Caturday to all who celebrate😻

Mick Smiley - Magic (Ghostbusters OST) (And in case you were wondering... https://medium.com/cuepoint/how-mick-smiley-made-the-best-ghostbusters-song-then-disappeared-efccd93cce8d)

Well, let's put some numbers behind that. In 2023, global box office - all the movies, in all the cinemas everywhere* - clocked around $34bn. Pretty good. But in 2019, that figure was $42bn. (And in case you were wondering... 2020 was $11.5bn.) So yes, COVID hurt, but it also brought a massive uptick in streaming. And audiences are still pickier about what they want to go see, especially with cinema-exclusive windows chopped down to months or even weeks. I'm definitely one of them: while I've gone out with friends for GOTG3, D&D and Wonka, I've happily waited for Oppenheimer, Songbirds & Snakes, Marvels and Barbie. Unless it's something I really wanna see, the movies can come to me. Averagely interesting is no longer enough. *except South Korea, where there is a lot of very weird and somewhat insular box office gaming going on, so it's been excluded from industry figures. Odd little story: worth a couple minutes of your time to read.

Oooooooooooookay. I know they’re trying for a GOTG vibe here, it actually looks the part, and they’ve got a stellar cast. But that script… …if a trailer’s supposed to be the best bits of a flick/attract mode, then we may have some serious issues…?

*looks up over Classic Rock Magazine* Keep it down, you kids, I'm reading about the history of Powerslave and Two Minutes To Midnight. Which is only 90 seconds these days. That's inflation for you. *wanders off in demon-horned slippers muttering Sunlight, falling on your steel... Death in life is your ideal*...

Same, though going Dominator instead. Going full superspy with this one...

Goldfrapp - Alive

The movie nerd in me loves all the cinematic detail (down to the right title fonts for the credits, and a Wilhelm). And yes, Troy Baker nails Harrison's intonation, exasperation and breathy wonderment with aplomb. They also almost nail Denholm Elliott, (although whoever did his facial capture in this early FMV did my boy dirty - it looks like he's grown a second face on top of the first one), and we have Unbearable Weight's Alessa Mastronardi as second protagonist / team play character Gina. And our mysterious thief who kicks off the story is Tony "Candyman" Todd, who seems to have had the most luck with the mocap. On m'learned coll's note about facial expressions: it is weird that animators in this day and age have trouble figuring out where teeth should be and how they should be lit, which keeps giving uncanny valley moments. Found an extended interview with the MachineGames team. And while I'm not normally a fan of corporate EPKs, they do seem like genuinely passionate nerds who got lucky with this gig. I hope it plays out well for them.

Given there's been a lot of comic book movies lately - of, let's face it, variable quality - it'd be nice to know what else all y'all have been watching out there that's good and pick up some ideas. One to kick you off: Shakespearian regular Mark Rylance fronts up The Outfit (Netflix). It's about a quiet and shy English cutter (not a tailor, apparently...), trained on the famed Savile Row, who left England to escape gang violence - and the influx of blue jean teen culture. But as luck would have it, Len promptly winds up in late Mob-era Chicago, with a local minor-league Don as his primary client. And what should have been a quiet evening of sewing goes all to hell. Beyond that, no spoilers, but if you like your Hitchcock - particularly Rope - you're going to dig on this. Whatch'yall got?

Not a huge amount of info on this one, other than: Supposedly follows the path a Program that wants to become a real live boy. Pinocchi2.0, I guess. The character of ARES is from an older version of the Legacy development that was canned. Whether protagonist, antagonist or a mixture of both... no idea, though ARES suggests they're military software. Daft Punk will not be reuniting for this gig. Which is a damn shame, frankly.

I'm sure you could, but they're mostly not allowed out without a minder or to use sharp cutlery.

...and then hiding it from the IRS, investors, residuals calculations and anyone who foolishly took net points instead of salary...

Well, if I had a comment on that... Barbie and Oppenheimer were two very different movies, which were ostensibly aimed at two very different demographics. They're also very good movies. So whether it was a genius marketing exec wheeze (and I wouldn't put it past Robbie herself to come up with it) or a genuine viral trend, people watched them back to back. Often with appropriate or switchable outfits. Result: two billion bucks. Plus an awful lot of Barbie merch, hats, iTunes downloads, etc . (Not so many Fisher-Price Oppenheimer First Atomic Lab For Toddlers kits, which was a shame. I might pick up a remnant for the nieces for Christmas). So my message to Whollyodd is: boot the marketers and analysts out of the boardroom at the pre-production stage. Make smaller bets - and these days, $100m to $150m is relatively small, compared to the likes of Fast X... ...on making more and better movies. A good flick, marketed properly will find its audience. Even the ones that don't will find a home on Netflix.

Suspect kids of a certain age will watch this on Saturdays with a bowl of Cinnamon Cheerios... Thoughts:

Amir Talai, Christian Borle & Chorus - Stayed Gone EXPLICIT LYRICS

We like Pedro: Mando, Joel in Last Of Us, Javi in Unbearable Weight... and even Max the manager in Bloodsucking B***ards - all benefiting from charisma by the bucketload. (Even Maxwell Lord from the misbegotten WW84 was eminently memeable.) All of which makes makes him very wrong in my headcanon for Reed. Who may be a superhero and one of the smartest folks alive, but also a bit of a milquetoast personality-wise. Not Zaddy type. Really is a missed opportunity to cast Krasinski for reals - and Blunt. That would have been one hell of a double act...

Now 18%... and falling. Even the "positive" reviews say it's not good. It seems almost as inexplicable Sony putting this out as WB burning Batgirl. I still haven't got round to seeing Jared Leto's magnum opus, btw. Just out of Morbid curiosity, are we talking: "so bad it's hilarious" (eg: Jason X, Doom, KISS's Phantom Of The Park) "switch off after 20 minutes bad" (Rebel Moon) "a crime against the Gods of cinematography so heinous that the director and actors deserve an eternity in career hell" (Battlefield: Earth)

Small post-cred spoiler if we haven't talked about this already:

So, for those of you not brave enough to Google "DP Movie" or who weren't watching the Swiftie Bowl, here ya go. Let the wild speculation and (hopefully fairly clean and Disney-friendly) begin!