Donomark

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  1. Donomark

    This week

    πŸŽ„πŸŽ„πŸŽ„πŸŽ„Same to you man!
  2. That's awesome. I too really enjoyed. It's definitely silly, but being so with it's whole chest. I loved the darkness of the last two specials, so the series/character earned a little lightheartedness. Reminded me of Unicorn and the Wasp, which is one of my favorites. I have to agree, I found myself thinking "He is objectively sexy". I'm sure the various Doctor stans would pipe in to "Well actually" but Ncuti Gatwa is the first one I've found to be a sex symbol kind of Doctor.
  3. Favourite Featured Actor Gwyneth Paltrow Favourite Review Pearl Harbour Worst Movie Covered Pearl Harbour Best Feedback Pandy's balls-less ramblings from the Hospital Favourite Jingle Words that rhyme with Damon Most Anticipated DIRECTOR for Next Year Martin Campbell
  4. Thinking more about it, I like the reasoning for 14 to be the Doctor that leads into a break because previously during the Moffat era, it feels like the Doctor stopping is just told to us after the fact or over a time skip. We never see him actually lead into it. His retirement after 24 years with River, or Matt Smith's living on that planet for hundreds of years (I've never liked that, I dislike that element of the special). With Tennant's Doctor, it's a culmination of his character history. And Tennant's been the one Doctor consistently stapled with emotional trauma like I said before, so it really feels earned.
  5. Awful, awful. Awful. Gotta be honest, the onslaught of supremely talented black actors dying young has really been getting to me. Chadwick Boseman, Michael K. Williams, Lance Reddick and now Andre Braugher - who is one of the most supremely talented, perennially underrated actors in modern history. The man was a Shakespearian actor. Top level. Even though he won two Emmys, I still feel he never quite got his due of recognition. I have been heartened how much outpouring of love he's been given since last night.
  6. Yeah that shit was obvious, anyone complaining about that is actively being obtuse.
  7. I kinda agree with you, I left the film annoyed at what felt like two hours of playing with ideas and concepts without finding anything to zero in on. Charles Melton is rightly praised for his acting, and his character ends up being the one the film recognizes as the true focus of the story, but also doesn't care that much. The angle they went with Natalie Portman's character was definitely interesting but the campiness with both her and Julianne Moore (who, despite the character being based on a very real person came across as a complete caricature) took me out of the movie. To be honest the story they're basing everything on is so sordid and ugly that it didn't seem like they fully mastered reconciling with it before adapting. IDK if 25 or so years later "camp" is really the right approach to take with telling a story of abject child rape, although I suppose it's been done before elsewhere.
  8. I perfectly enjoyed The Star Beast, but Wild Blue Yonder is absolutely 100% my shit. Creepy, unsettling, mysterious, scary with situations that simply demand a lot from its power couple of actors, who absolutely bring it. I've not enjoyed an episode this much in a long, long time. This is in my list of favorite stories.
  9. I'd like to suggest Ali or Pursuit of Happiness (as I prolly did before), but one is majorly an impression even though it was Oscar nominated, and the other might be seen as mostly a downer. Men in Black or Independence Day are top 3 Smith films, so definitely one of those two for sure.
  10. The Marvels: Methinks this is a big case of bad press and bad luck afflicting a film which at the end of the day is perfectly decent. It's not mega grand or anything, but it's nowhere near bad, and honestly a lot more entertaining IMO than Captain Marvel was. Iman Vellani is the film's MVP, and any time she or her family are on-screen, I'm into the film. But I like Carol and Monica too. and I think they're far less stoic than most reviews are accusing them of being. The plot/villain are whatever, but the actress does what she can. The action scenes are great, not quite Winter Solider level, but show more interest than the last several Marvel movies. Overall it's on the lower end of the good camp of MCU films. Great mid-credit teaser.
  11. Good Will Hunting to go over that Gen-X Boston persona he and Affleck defined so loudly.
  12. I feel like the RTD era media machine is really back in full force leading up to the 60th. I'm seeing new stuff, clips, promos and general talk online of DW every single day, in a way I haven't since Matt Smith's first season. Maybe it's simply my algorithm but the excitement for the anniversary and the series seems fully back in action compared to the last several years.
  13. The Lost Boys: Directed by Joel Schumacher A much more tonally variable viewing than Falling Down, I enjoyed this way more than the previous Schumacher flick this year. I'd seen some of this years ago at band camp the summer before senior year of high school, but only in snatches. I remembered the train sequence, and not much else. This movie is a lot of fun. 1980s media is hit or miss for me as a lot of it is really cool and exploding with creativity, but sometimes it's so overrated by Gen Xers that the period elements of some cultural products can take collateral damage. This movie would seemingly be one of those lost causes when you see the tagline and the wild hair, but I found this to be completely unpretentious. It's a fun, stylish, dynamic movie with just a sly wink at the audience without being smug or smarmy about it. I love the set-up that some dweeby kids fashion themselves experts on vampires purely because they read comics, and they're dweeby throughout but completely correct at the same time. That's hilarious, and this is a rare movie where all of the then-child actors were 100% funny. Corey Haim's Sam's a teeny bit annoying at times, but that's honestly due to some repetitious scenes of him trying to warn or lie to Dianne Wiest. The acting across the board is superb, with the lightest players being Jason Patric and Jami Gertz. Their romantic lead characters don't have nearly as much personality compared to everyone else, but they don't let the film down. They charm the film with their sexy faces, which adds to the whole romantic theme of vampires. At the end of the day, I came to this movie for Keifer Sutherland, and he didn't disappoint. I love how underplayed he took to this role, and from start to finish his David character remained fascinating just being an anti-villain. He's absolutely the bad guy, totally the antagonist and an evil dude, but he really sells someone who doesn't view themselves as evil and considers themself as just living their best life without coming off as totally arrogant. After Brotherhood of Justice, I want to check out more of Keifer's young man roles. I also loved the soundtrack. It had both a wonderfully dated but nevertheless effective rock opera score that despite some song played several times were effective in making certain scenes twice as exciting.
  14. Hell up in Harlem: The sequel to Black Caesar, once again written and directed by Larry Cohen and starring Fred Williamson Was always going to check this out when I had the time. While Black Caesar was a challenging watch, I was curious to see how it was followed up, especially with it being a sequel in the same year as the predecessor. Pretty funny at first. The original ends with a stark scene of Tommy Gibbs mugged by a gang of young kids, left for dead in the middle of a vacant lot. This movie retcons that right away to show that he called for help and was taken to the hospital in time. It's an entire third of the first act, with repetitious dialogue and a LOT of exposition, which characterizes the film throughout. Sometimes in Black Caesar, there was not enough information delivered to always follow what was going on. Here, character state their contexts so loudly that it would drive Robot Devil insane. Julius Harris plays a closer part to Tommy in this, quickly (and somewhat contrivedly) becoming part of his criminal operation. Harris is the greatest, right up there in acting talent with Williamson. Whenever he's on-screen, it's magnetic. This film is probably technically worse than Black Caesar in that it's a louder movie with more action and violence than character drama, but at the same time I think it's more watchable for easy entertainment. If you can choose to ignore Tommy's rapist character in the first film, this movie makes him more of a definite hero - actively using his criminal organization to get rid of drug dealers and control crime across several states. The evil he does is defined as killing people, and mainly corrupt white politicians who have it coming. Maybe that's what fans of this series remember over Black Caesar, which was more upfront on how spiritually fallen Tommy was. This film has some pablum about Tommy's soul being driven to violence and how that's bad, and it is, but the film doesn't really believe that. Not when there's shooting to be done. The worst elements are still everything with Gloria Hendry. I don't know if Larry Cohen personally hated her or if it's simply misogynoir left unchecked, but every scene with her just works to make her character's existence a living hell. The opening scene works as a retcon in her characterization, and the movie tries to re-frame her and Tommy's relationship as a lost romance when originally she rightfully hated him and worked to free herself from his clutches. It's the kind of disrespect that recalls very bad anime, or those soap operas where a romantic lead rapes his love interest and that's treated as a minor inconvenience. I'm entertained by these two films, but the other blaxploitation movies I've seen didn't have the leads - no matter how crooked they were - rape their women, nor their female leads treated with such utter contempt. That keeps this Fred Williamson duology below a certain quality floor at the end of the day. I'd still recommend them because "part of the times" and all that, but both have that Gloria Hendry factor that's just unforgivable. I blame Larry Cohen, being part of the trend in these films to want to make popular movies in a profitable genre but didn't care enough about the people he was making these stories about and for regarding how their image is utilized.
  15. Because I didn't post it, I also watched Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart. Perfectly decent as an extra-long episode, but IMO unsatisfying as an ending to the series, which Doc and Jack could not help. They've been very open about their disappointment on being cancelled and wish they were given space for a proper final season, so none of my reaction is any antipathy towards them. It's just that previous finales have been done better. IMO the absolute peak of the series storytelling was the Season 3 episode "The Orb", Season 4 finale, and the conclusion to the Blue Morpho arc last season. With the film, it's generally shenanigans for much of its runtime, with only the last few minutes giving us real answers to the show's mysteries. And those answers are indeed satisfying, but the delivery of them yearns to be better paced. Also Brock is barely in this, something that the creators - again - have expressed regret in interviews.
  16. Well said. I really enjoyed the status quo of season 2 but season 4 made the big moments worthwhile.
  17. What do you feel is the best season out of the series now?
  18. I figure since we've been seeing pics of Gatwa's season, they wanna get people ready for the specials, then go full-hog on promoting the 15th Doctor's era, so as to not get people excited for different things out of order.
  19. Part of me wants to feel guilty, like I'm being pandered to since series 4 is my favorite and the Ten/Donna duo is my favorite era...buuuut I don't care. This is my Tom Baker and Liz Sladen. To me, Tennant and Tate are Doctor Who, so I am amped for this.
  20. Season 2 might be my favorite as well. It's a funnier, better animated version of Season 1, which I will forever like. When I did my rewatch a few years back, I had a hard time picking between seasons 2 and 4 as my favorite.