drmka9
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Posts posted by drmka9
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Jessica Chastain is great, but I really wish she'd get more to do in movies than stand around looking pensive while things go on elsewhere. Nice that she took the initiative for the rescue, and put herself at risk, rather than let Sebastian Stan do it.
I understand why they had Lewis do the final EVA, but it really undermines her character for me. She's a tough-as-nails former-military commander, there's no way in hell she'd pull the EVA specialist off the most precise EVA they have to make. Lewis essentially puts everyone else at risk because of her own guilt, and it's a shitty way to end an otherwise great character.
I get why they did it, but the overall changes to the ending bugged. More so, I think, because in the book Watney explicitly says "Now, if this were Hollywood, here's what would happen...but this isn't Hollywood, so now here's what actually happened." It seems like they threw out a large chunk of why people loved the book so much. And I love the film, so I don't want it to sound like I thought it was terrible, I just wished it had skewed a bit closer to the source material on some things.
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Also - was there some reason Damon's character was missing a personal life? I appreciated not having him pine over some photograph of a woman during the whole film -- but the total lack of any romantic interests seemed a bit odd.
(But seeing the one Mars crew member going back on the next mission made me feel bad for his kid... Guess someone else will be there for his formative years..)
I really liked that Watney didn't have a wife, or girlfriend, or kid, or anything else. They risked everything to try to rescue him for him, not to bring back someone's dad/husband/etc. It actually makes it a bit more poignant for me. And there was actually one romantic subplot, but it was kept well in the background (as it was in the book).
Was it a body double or CGI (or both)? I assumed it was same process as whatever they did with Chris Evans for first "Captain America".
It was a body double. Damon was up for losing weight, but the shooting schedule made it impossible.
One of the little nods to realism that just hit me was that they did actually show Watney's teeth getting grimier/yellower towards the third act.
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I'm still digesting it, but I think I really liked it. While I loved the book, I'm glad the screenwriter streamlined some of the incidents and removed others entirely. The changes at the end bugged a bit, though.
I kind of wish Beck had still made the EVA. I get why they wanted Lewis to do it - and Chastain was a total boss as Lewis - but it felt like the rest of the Ares crew got a bit shortchanged overall.
I thought it was a really good adaptation of the book, but I have one question. Genuinely curious -- would the sky look blue as seen from the surface of Mars?
Most of the time, the sky on Mars looks yellowish, I believe. It does turn bluish at sunset, though. I don't think you'd generally see the clear blue sky in the middle of the day, as shown in the film. In certain photos from Mars, though, NASA will adjust the colors to look more Earth-like...that seems to be the aesthetic the film went for.
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Black Widow not being on the list really makes no sense. I guess we can fanwank that every other potential target was out of range (Pepper, Rhodey, Hawkeye) but she was right there! And it's interesting that Falcon wasn't deemed to be a threat based on the algorithm, considering how quick he was to aid Cap.
I've kind of figured that the Triskelion was off-limits to the helicarriers. Zola's algorithm would likely try to weed out the non-HYDRA SHIELD agents, and, at the Triskelion, there'd be too many of them in one place for the HYDRA agents to escape the line of fire.
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From what I've read - and this is really only from one source, so take it with a huge grain of salt - Marvel knew AOU was going to have heftier criticism lobbed at it before it was even out of the gate. No one behind the scenes was really happy with the film, particularly the forced changes from the committee, but there wasn't time to reshoot. It wouldn't surprise me if this was fallout from that situation.
I'm also not sure how much of a committee they really need, at this point. The "original" franchises have just about wound down, and none of them are particularly independent of one another anymore. It'll be interesting, though, to see how interwoven the newer franchises end up being without a committee behind the scenes.
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That doesn't jive with others have said. Namely that RDJ was perfect for Tony and suggested who they base Tony's character off of. Namely Elon Musk. Iron Man was thought to be a huge risk at the time and RDJ showed he had the talent and that Iron Man and the Marvel movie universe would be a huge hit. So they didn't need Terrance Howard who a lot of people in his role as Rhodey thought Don Cheadle was playing him again rather then as the new guy.
The issue wasn't whether or not RDJ could play Tony, but whether RDJ would be sober and out of trouble enough not to sink the film. A number of people went to bat for him. Howard was one of the people who fought for RDJ, and was annoyed when his salary didn't keep pace with Downey's. He was replaced by (the far superior, IMO) Cheadle, but not without some issues.
RDJ has stood by just about everyone else in the MCU, though. Not long after the Avengers came out, the actors had some serious negotiations with Marvel to amp up their salaries a bit. Despite having a contract that guarantees him more money than God, RDJ threw his weight behind his coworkers in the negotiations.
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Is Black Widow's name Natalia or Natasha? I keep seeing both.
Both, kind of. Natasha is the diminutive of Natalya/Natalia - like Mike for Michael in English. She's also used Natalie as a cover.
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I don't understand why CA: TWS is supposed to be the best Marvel movie. It has a great first act and a very good second act, but the third act is exactly the same old Marvel climax as in every other movie too and the face changing technology is such a plot device I can't take it seriously. If the movie had stayed true to the political thriller idea all the way, it would have been great, but as it is I'd say it's very good and then has a disappointing finale.
TWS is my favorite of the Marvel films, but I tend to start checking out in that last third. I like the Cap/Bucky fight and the Agent 13/Rumlow standoff, but everything else feels a bit superfluous. The face-changing tech made more sense in the original cut, but it comes out of nowhere in the theatrical version. I still kind of wish the female council member just happened to be the one badass who'd try to take down Pierce, with Natasha coming in after the fact.
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That said, I think the unevenness of the movie had more to do with Marvel ordering re-shoots and adding scenes because they didn't like the first cut of the movie and they were trying to fix it.
From what I remember, it had a lot more to do with the Avengers being released and everyone fangirling over Loki. Marvel wound up demanding that Loki be given more of a storyline, and Malekith's plot (the actual film plot, in other words) was cut drastically. It makes some sense, given the bigger picture of the MCU, but it's a shame TDW wound up so uneven as a result of the meddling.
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Serious Question: Can we really say there is such a thing as "box office poison"? I mean, people aren't not seeing the films of Ryan Reynolds or Armie Hammer because they do not like the actors in question (at least not that I think), but rather those guys just don't apparently make a lot of films worth watching to many people.
I've never really thought of box office poison as an active thing, if that makes sense. It's just the opposite of "I enjoy this actor and will even see a shitty shitty film if they're in it." For someone like Reynolds, as an example, I don't think he has enough personal fans to overcome being in a terrible movie. It's not so much that he sinks the film, he just can't salvage it.
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Natasha's kind of a weird sticking point: I really can't see her siding against Cap, especially with the other side being Stark-led. But she might have a lot of issues separating Bucky from the Winter Soldier - if she even believes that the two should be separate - and find Cap shielding him intolerable. She did try to hunt him down before Cap was ever in the picture.
I'm also not sure the sides will stay all that stagnant, either. There's always potential for switching and double-crossing.
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I think it will have a lot to do with Bucky. That would make Tony's stance much more sympathetic.
I've been hearing that from a bunch of sources.
That's part of why Crossbones is after Cap, too. He's pissed because of what happened to him, but he's really pissed that his pet assassin is no longer a Hydra asset
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Own stunts: Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman proved to be quite the daredevil and tried his own stunts
Photo agencies identify the stunt man as Boseman.
They're also identifying the Winter Soldier stuntman in those photos as Sebastian Stan, when it pretty clearly isn't. Even when an actor does their own stunts on film (as many/most of the MCU actors do), stunt people are usually the ones who run through it over and over for safety checks and getting the scene set (lighting, framing, etc).
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It took me a second viewing to realize that the leader of the rival posse was Bradley Cooper - and yes, that Bradley Cooper. He apparently grew up in that area and is the same age as Adam.
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I can't really wear heels unless it's for an extremely short time, and I can sit. I have had gout several times in my right foot toe joint. I often feel like I don't look as nice in formal or cocktail dresses. It's a sad thing, but the pain is awful. Does anyone have tips on flat shoes that look nice with fancy dresses? I tend to pay less than 300$ for pairs. Not into 500$+ for shoes.
Take a look at Shoes of Prey. They make custom shoes for a pretty reasonable price (the flats I just made were about $139) and offer tons of options.
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I don't know anything about him other than from this article, but it's usually a bad sign when all of the hs and college-aged children stop talking to a parent during a divorce. Makes me feel that there may have been infidelity, substance issues or another problem that was really caused by Herjavec himself, not just, as he said, "growing apart". Kids often take divorce badly, but unless they feel one parent has actually been "wronged" they usually don't completely freeze one of them out of their lives because of it.
I've seen this line of reasoning in a few places, and it bothers me a bit. Back when I was in high school, my parents blindsided my siblings and me when they announced that they were getting divorced. Even though they said they had just grown apart (and, decades later, maintain that there was no infidelity), all of us kids - middle school through college-aged - blamed the parent that wasn't around as much. Neither was actually to blame, but we wanted there to be a definite reason why the divorce was happening and it was easy to point a finger at the parent who was always busy with work and other things. In Herjavec's case, there could easily be other factors as many have assumed. But given how busy he's been in the past few years, I don't find it out of the ordinary that his kids would side with their mother even without a factor like infidelity.
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I would argue that not eating pork is not that much of a disadvantage, though. They could use a dish that they would use for eggplant or chicken, couldn't they, except use the pork? They can tell by the color how done it is or isn't, and can taste the sauce separately from the meat. Might be a slight disadvantage if seasonings don't always transfer well, but not a huge one. But I'm not a cook, so I don't know for sure.
Part of the issue with cooking pork is cooking it properly, temperature-wise. Until recently in the US, pork was only cooked to well-done, making it tricky to keep tender. A few years ago the cooking recommendations changed to allow a medium temperature, which is still higher than what most cuts of meat are cooked to. Someone that doesn't cook pork often would likely have difficulty cooking it perfectly and to temperature. I think that's likely part of why Ludo was such a jerk about Tarik overcooking the pork.
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News flash! If a person didn't understand the science of baking, then how did they make the final cut to be on "The Taste?"
You'd be surprised. Very few chefs are comfortable working as both a savory chef and a pastry chef. That's one of the reasons why I enjoy MasterChef UK's Michel Roux so much - he's a savory chef that handles (and enjoys) desserts. Of the four mentors on The Taste, Nigella's the only one who seems to enjoy dessert stuff. I know Anthony's said that he has almost no sweet tooth, and I think Marcus and Ludo are pretty similar. The guest chefs all seem to be savory chefs as well.
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The male mentors are always presented as professional chefs and home cooks are seen on this show as something less. Even this week with Ludo saying about Jen "Well, she's a home cook, so disorganized".
To be fair, even Jen's mom called her a "disaster in the kitchen" back in the auditions, IIRC. I do think there's a big discrepancy between how the mentors/producers view the show and how the audience views it, though. In an interview one of the mentors - either Marcus or Ludo, I can't remember - said that he generally prefers working with home cooks as professional chefs come in feeling that they already know everything. Home cooks are more open to learning and receiving advice. I'm not sure that's ever really come across on the show.
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I'm not sure I understand the point of the final cook off (besides picking who is going home). The contestants are doing the cooking, but it looks like it's all what the mentors want them to do?
I think it depends on each mentor and contestant. Both this week and last, Ludo said he was going with what Jen wanted to do and it wound up looking like while she had the initial idea, he made sure she was using proper technique and that the proportion of ingredients was correct. Marcus, on the other hand, seems to have had more input into the actual flavor profile each time.
While I love how generally non-snarky the contestants are on this show, I cracked up at Tom's immediate reaction to being told he had a red star: "What, worse than nothing?"
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Well, that's just plain weird. Did Adam make that change, or did some higher-up do so?
I had heard originally that they wanted one of the kids to be a girl to be able to touch on girls' fashion and interests in the '80s. Since then, though, I've heard some vague references that Eric Goldberg wasn't thrilled with the idea of being portrayed in a television show. I have no idea how true that idea is, though, as I really haven't heard anything directly about that.
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Has Barry always been portrayed as such a loser? His mother lets him win at arm wrestling? Jeez. It's painful seeing how his entire family gives him obvious wins yet the sad sack doesn't catch on.
There was one episode - I think the first season finale - where Barry admits that he isn't nearly as cool as he tries to portray himself. It's kind of a nice running characterization with him.
I have never understood how a person could play Trivial Pursuit more than once since you have heard most of the questions.
I've been playing it off-and-on for a few decades and still haven't heard most of the questions. One deck has something like 6000 questions, and you can (or could, at one point) buy additional decks.
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I give them a bit of a pass on the music side of things, just because it seems like it'd be nearly impossible to coordinate getting the rights to the 'right' song for any given story. But I was also a little kid in the '80s, so most of the pop culture from that time blends together for me. I'm sure something like this set in the '90s would be jarring for me.
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No, I saw a different energy too. It has never been clear to me if they have a day off between challenges. Since they clearly went from one to the final here, I would chalk some of it to that. At the same time, I'm not sure if it was so much an energy drop as it was the thought, "Hey, this is the final... I'd better buckle down and get this DONE!"
I'm also wondering if, once they made it to the final, they also realized that the whole experience was almost over. Suddenly realizing that you're going back to your normal life and you won't be seeing your new friends every day must be bittersweet, and this group of contestants seems to have gotten really close. (From a quick look on Twitter: Dina and Rachael refer to each other as "my future wife," Cig and George are talking about setting up shop together, and almost every contestant posted a photo of themselves with blue eyebrows in support of Keaghlan, who had some really nasty insults hurled her way.)
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The Martian (2015)
in Movies
There's still a protocol and chain of command, though, and Lewis messed with both of those. I honestly don't think it would bother me if they had established her as having any EVA history or abilities.
And truthfully, it doesn't bother me all that much. It's just the largest of the differences between the book and the film, and both interpretations are great. I think I overall prefer the book, but the film is still one of the best I've seen in some time.