Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "The Critical Drinker" channel.

  1. I can't give you chapter and verse, but I felt the same way about the Star Wars prequels, which were written by George Lucas. I really had much higher expectations for the Jedi, in general, and Anakin Skywalker in particular. "Where's the wisdom and subtlety? Where's the DEPTH?" While some of what you say is assuredly true, I think part of the problem is now that we have the CGI capability to present virtually ANY spectacle, the spectacle, itself, has taken precedence over the story-telling. And the ability to create any visual a computer geek can put together has given us action scenes as envisioned by computer geeks, modulo cost-cutting measures that result in a bunch of jump-cuts, trying to massage a geek's vision of the action with something that's halfway acceptable to audiences. Oh well, that's not a total analysis, but I think it's more than just arrested-development types doing the writing. And MAYbe it's at least in part due to we, the audience, growing more mature, while Hollyweird is targeting a demographic raised on participation trophies and the new racissism, while us old farts are wondering what the fuss is about after fighting the REAL civil-rights battles 50 years ago, and WINNING.
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  2. I turned my back on Cena after his Mandarin apology to China. And I don't care how they push The Message. If they push it, I'm not watching it. Period.
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  3. Do they just not do their research, or do they write this way on purpose?
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  4. Let's not forget, it was men who put her in that position. She is what she is. She should've been fired a long time ago, but that would ruin their virtue signal. On the other hand, most of the men who would've been hired for her job would have essentially the same ideology and blind spots.
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  5. When is it cultural appropriation and when is it progressive virtue? I get confused. If I were black, I'd despise the tokenization.
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  6. Sadly, I won't see it, because I don't give money to Amazon. It told me by its actions that it hates people like me, and I don't give money to people who hate me.
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  7. I don't know. The story of the two warriors m.eeting, fighting it out, and becoming fast friends, like Robin Hood and Little John, is pretty standard stuff. The two cowboys who duke it out at the saloon and are pals for life. It's a good little story
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  8. Yes, this is trash. But at the same time, Corporate Christmas could use some de-constructing. Just not by these horrible and horribly un-funny people, who think they're doing satire.
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  9. I wanted to see an ugly lump of a man as Gurney Halleck. Somebody with a nasty inkvine scar, busted nose and cauliflower ears, like a light-heavyweight MMA fighter, with the soul of a poet. Didn't like the casting choice of Stewart.
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  10.  @letsfindsomepeace9207  I gave up on the theater experience a long time ago. You've always gotta put up with the rudest person(s) in the audience, which ruins the immersion in the film. I'd rather watch it on a big-screen at home.
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  11.  @llla_german_ewoklll6413  I think the coof was the straw that broke the back of more than one mass-media paradigm. A lot of t.v. and movies relies on momentum from previous eras when they were the only game in town and movie-going was a cultural phenomenon. I don't think the mass audiences even exist any more, at least not to be herded into a room full of strangers to watch a movie.
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  12.  @jojosoni6355  Staying in schedule is because of their whole money-making paradigm being so messed-up. Movie makers need to take a longer view, but the studio system is all about quick profits. I'm hoping to see a new wave of independent labors of love that out-class what the Hollywood model is capable of producing. There's a definite convergence between the production values of the big studios and what a team of independents can create, without the time and money pressures that plague Hollywood and reduce all that potential to mind-numbing shallowness.
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  13. "Wouldn't it be better to just make a smart sci-fi movie that gets people thinkin', instead?" During the pause, I anticipated "You're gonna have to get all the way off my back about that."
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  14. That's a bit black-and-white. As Thomas Sowell would say "There aren't any solutions, just trade-offs." We need order to function. Too much order is tyranny. There's always a balance to be struck and a balance always is struck between the two. One key is to impose the minimum amount of order in order for society to function, healthily. Another key is to strictly limit the power in the hands of any one person or group. That means limited government. If you read the DUNE books, the "Honored Matres" were a twisted version of the Reverend Mothers of the Bene Gesserit. They came to power as a result of "nanny government," the so-called modern-day liberal utopia some think we're currently enjoying (if only "far right white supremacists" could be wiped-out, according to them). These nanny-government types are becoming increasingly authoritarian. The Honored Matres took that to an extreme, but they were originally the bureaucrat class in the human colonies from which they arose.  @zaydeshaddox7015 
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  15. It doesn't matter. Suffice it to say that none of us is perfect; therefore, none of us should be given too much power. People want to be saved. That means they want someone super-powerful to intervene on their behalf. That means they want somebody to have too much power.  @dawnfire82 
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  16. A high position is like any other possession. That's why I try not to own anything too valuable. Pretty soon, it owns ME. I'll worry about it getting ripped off. I'll worry about it being damaged in some way (OMG! A SCRATCH on my Brand New Car!). Then there are those in positions of power who know exactly how sneaky and disingenuous they were to GET that position. They start projecting the same motives and behaviors on others (That's why Democrats act the way they do.). They're like cheating husbands who will never believe that their wife is faithful. @zaydeshaddox7015 
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  17. I'll probably just watch Pitch Meeting. But Ryan George will have to read DUNE, first.
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  18.  @JohnSmith-is4uu  Yes. When this happened in Germany, 90 years ago, godawful sanitized Nazi entertainment was the least of Europe's worries!
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  19. I passed on both SHOGUN and DUNE. Both tampered with the characters and story lines too much for my taste.
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  20. You went to the theater. That's what Hollywood wants you to do.
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  21.  @lincolnpascual  In other words, you have no respect for the intellectual property rights of others. That's OK. You're probably not smart enough to have anybody steal a patent or an original story idea from you or anything.
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  22.  @mrknarf4438  I agree. Now action scenes are choreographed by couch potatoes raised on animé.
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  23. I felt like the "sides" taken by Captain America and Iron Man in "Civil War" didn't make much sense. There was the duty-bound Captain making the case for liberty and the anti-authoritarian Iron Man making the case for bending the knee. It just didn't fit their characters, in my opinion. They barely managed to pull it off - I guess - with their character arcs, but it seemed pretty forced and artificial, because they really wanted "Civil War" to be a thing.
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  24. DUNE was a smash hit when it came out in '69/'70ish. Won all the big awards for sci-fi that year. Dune Messiah which followed, not so much. Fans didn't much like the de-construction of their hero.
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  25. I think there's plenty of material in The Hobbit for a good trilogy, given the right treatment and the right script.
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  26. They're too cheap to film real action, properly. And more and more you see movies where they were too cheap to do the CGI properly. Disorienting jump-cuts suck.
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  27. I disagree with the title. Both sides may lose.
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  28. The 1st JP was highly contrived, as well, with characters that were too dumb and too smart, by turns. Great concept idea by the original author, but story telling in the movie was very poor. Kind of like George Lucas screenwriting, where the spectacle is imagined and then the characters and plot are contrived to provide it. The original SW trilogy was a basic 3-part Western, with visual effects no one had ever seen, before, in service to the plot. The tricky part for sci fi movies was providing those visuals without looking totally fake. Then the visuals became REAL and the writing went into the toilet.
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  29. That's cool. Paul Atreides has received deep training in memory skills (Mentat training) single combat from two very unforgiving schools, total mind and body control, and military generalship his whole life. He's already a bad-ass with a world class education before the story begins.
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  30. Brilliant, tightly-constructed review. Spot-on as far as I'm concerned. Great point about Zach Snyder, too. Perfect for this film. But made a hash of Batman-vs-Superman.
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  31. First of all, it's the nature of movie-making to make every production a one-of-a-kind, one-off, with the writing, directing and producing all focused on just the one movie, without any regard for what went before. They think they're showing their creativity, and keeping things fresh, and excited. The whole "subverting expectations" thing. Much could be fixed just by casting actors with charisma, especially the two leads. I think Sophie's a good enough actress, but she's just not very charismatic. Same for James Macavoy. But spot on with regard to how it just seems like they lifted chunks of old scripts and cobbled them together. It does seem like it's formulaic and they mailed it in. You wonder how they can copy so much and at the same time thumb their noses at continuity. I think they did sort of try to be a period piece with the sound track. Maybe the early '90s just sucked for music. Maybe Joe Walsh and the B52s just held out on 'em. Bottom line is well-intentioned movie by tone-deaf creatives. Yours and others' reviews kept me from watching this when it first came out. But I finally saw it, yesterday, because I still have HBO for some unknown reason. I never thought the X-Men writing was all that good, but good actors and good special effects could at least keep your interest. On the other hand, it may just be that nobody likes the fact that they wrote Jean Grey as a tragic figure, in the first place, and we want to see triumph.
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  32.  @bromporke  Never bought Disney+. Won't spend one red cent on anything Disney until there's a real sea change in management. I think these media mega-companies should be broken-up by Sherman Anti-Trust. Funny how the more laws we pass against such things, the more mega-companies we see. You'd almost think that the politicians are in league with the robber barons...
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  33. It is DEFinitely a classic hero's journey. They don't start de-constructing Paul until the next book.
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  34.  @justinsherman9350  You're wrong. If Paul had failed, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen would've been the one to lead the charge. Paul prevailed over Feyd-Rautha and then he refused to do the Sisterhood's bidding. The Sisters definitely had everything distilling down to a point, but the fact of the DUNE monopoly over the Spice and their successful harnessing of Desert Power meant that there was going to be a Holy Jihad, because the Fremen had the means to DESTROY the Spice, which all forces in the Imperium feared more than anything else. Paul was the biggest victory and the biggest defeat for the Sisterhood, who thought they'd be running everything, once they bred their Kwisatz Haderach. Paul took that away from them and his SON rubbed their noses in it for millennia!
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  35. TBH, the shallowness of characters began in the prequels. The sequels put the stilted storytelling on steroids.
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  36. You're speculating. I bet your speculations turn out to be on the money. But I won't know, except for seeing your and other reviews of the movie, because Disney's not getting any of my money. I do enjoy watching the shit show from a distance, though.
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  37. And yet, the great Renaissance masterpieces were pretty much sponsored by the aristocracy and included NOTHING hostile to the ruling class. The Medici clan were some of the worst of the worst, and they were the leading patrons of the arts in their day.
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  38. Actually, science proves nothing. All its claims and theories are provisional. Scientific theories survive only because every attempt to disprove them fails. "This herb will quiet the dragon in your stomach" is science, until a better theory without the dragon bits explains why the herb cures your stomach ache.
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  39.  @ignatiusj.reilly1197  it was hard to get into, but if you made it through the first little bits, it was damn good, and like the refrigerator setup that seemed a bit boring, there was a payoff for everything,
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  40.  @mala6238  The young John Connor in both was pretty soy and not too believable as the future tough leader of the resistance. The new terminator, Kristanna Loken, was good, though, and so were parts of the film. Linda Hamilton was great in T1 and T2, although she was getting pretty tainted by 3rd Wave Feminism by that point, and basically a man-hater in real life and on the screen. These men they hate were all raised with less male input than any generation that went before.
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  41. Pedro Pasquale is enough for a thumbs-down in my household.
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  42.  @OddityDK  What did he play, a squire? Because ARCHERS were pretty buff. They HAD to be to draw a war bow.
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  43.  @azmc4940  When DUNE opens, Paul's an under-sized 15-year-old, from a family of 6-footers. I haven't seen anybody get that right, yet.
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  44.  @mish375  I would imagine someone trained by the BG's in prana bindu (nerve and fiber) would be someone much like a court guard from medieval China. Strong and wiry. Not movie-star muscle definition. Probably wouldn't look very tough, unless you saw the calluses on their fingers, toes, feet and knuckles, or you noticed they had pretty thick wrists for such a skinny guy, or you were still alive looking up at them after you got on their wrong side. Pound-for-pound strong, but not cage-fight strong, like MMA. And QUICK, with superb body control.
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  45.  @marikroyals7111  So you're saying you wear men's clothes and hang out with LGBT crowd, but you're sick of being misjudged? I first noticed that with punkers, who'd pierce every inch of exposed skin (while exposing as much skin as possible), cut their hair in the inevitable mohawk, wear makeup that simulates a 6-day-old human corpse, tattoo their bodies with vulgar and outlandish images and text, then turn every conversation towards the subject of how people judge by appearances. In your case, I don't think it's a cry for help. Just someone who's practical and chooses to be comfortable rather than compete for eye-candy prizes. You sound like maybe you've got mild Aspergers, which means you probably aren't a good judge of what's flattering for you. There're all kinds of ways a woman can be comfortable without coming across as total butch. Heh. I'm a straight guy with a mild disability that made me very exacting about my own clothing, to accentuate the positive and diminish the negative. My OLDER sister noticed I always matched colors and was artful about how my clothes fit and looked on me. I gained the knack because while I was uncommon strong for someone so brittle, I still didn't look very prepossessing in short pants. Let's put it that way! LOL! My sister, my older brother and my dad were all of a husky, heavy-boned body type. My sister would ask ME for an honest opinion on what was flattering and what made her look fat. She had a woman's shape, but she was literally big-boned. But she always moved gracefully. She wouldn't show it but she could whup all the girls in her grade and about half the boys, even after puberty. Anyway, doesn't sound like you necessarily have my or my sister's problems, but I bet you're smart enough to make a study of it, if you wanted. That's an advantage of being a little OCD or Asberger's. You can get to about anything you want, because you have the ability to focus. Just gotta be deliberate and plan your attentions.
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  46.  @gilgamesh8334  : Since we sat around telling stories around the camp fire, these stories have been told. And people have always come back for more. There's nothing new under the Sun when it comes to storytelling. The joy is in mastery of storytelling, which Hollywood has lost sight of. The reason Ryan Johnson can be thought clever by subverting expectations is MILLENNIA of expectations created by master storytellers and traveling bards. But you need 99% good stuff to make the 1% "edgy." After the first "edgy" one, the rest are cheap, contrived knock-offs. You can't build a culture out of counter-culture. The minute you do, you're the establishment. You can't have that 1% without the 99%. So now they're down to about 10% of their audience. Do the math.
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  47. The arrogance of Brie Larsen to think she's something new, because Captain Marvel. Linda Hamilton paved the way, years ago. She also went kind of feminazi, as I recall. I didn't like all the writing - you'd think Sarah and Jon Connor would be way beyond some of the drama t.v. writers are always determined to inject - but I thought Lena Heady was awesomely cast for the role of Sarah Connor. Built for action, I thought.
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  48.  @Lonovavir  "This is the worst writing, ever." "Hold my beer."
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  49.  @poolee77  : When the source material of a screenplay is a screenplay, rather than a larger work ADAPTED to the screen, there are always going to be plot holes and issues with character development. We were very forgiving in the first trilogy, because we didn't know any better, AND - probably more importantly - we'd never seen special effects that good, before. As long as they stuck to "Good guys win" and old-fashioned themes (and scenes) straight out of old-fashioned Westerns, the formula worked. In the 2nd trilogy, Lucas tried to show he had some real depth, only he didn't. The plot and characters were subservient to the desired spectacle. This is a problem with screenwriting. You know the spectacle you want to see, and the plot and characters must serve that spectacle. Just tell a good story with good characters, and the spectacle will be there. In the old days, you knew what story you wanted to tell, and the tricky part was providing the rich visuals needed. We cleared that hurdle in the 1970s, with a genius mix of CGI and stop-motion scale models (on a level the Japanese never dreamed of). From that point on, the visuals have driven the character and plot. People aren't wowed by all the special effects. Those effects must serve a better-written STORY. I think the epitome of this was the over-choreographed fight scene between Anakin and Obi-Wan. Defy the laws of gravity until the writers decide the fight's gone on long enough. I bought one of the Star Wars paperbacks back in the '70s or '80s, on the understanding that the BOOK would be much better, much richer than the movies, themselves. The books were just screenplays. You know, what you write when you adapt a HUGE universe down to something in movie form. But in this case, the screenplay WAS the book, and there was just no depth there at all. They could've kept the movie franchise going virtually forever, if they hadn't been waylaid by grievance-studies idiots. Just keep it simple. "Space Western" idea is fine. Very broad appeal.
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  50.  @greatdude7279  People who voted for Biden are much fewer than the polls reported, but at the same time more plentiful than well-informed people who did NOT would care to admit.
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