Tank

Maximus is VERY Finn. I thought this multiple times.

Maybe now that AAA games have better writing, and we have adaptions that are actually good, Hollywood execs will stop thinking they need to completely rework games to adapt them. Last of Us was a 1:1 (ish) remake while Fallout was original but as true to game lore and design as possible. That's the way to go. Now lets manifest me getting to do Mass Effect.

Tonally it’s all over the map and def silly— but it won me over as a fan of the games. They stayed true to game lore even more than Last of Us did.

I think on the first view it makes sense to watch X then Pearl-- but rewatches can be chronological. Oddly, it almost seems like you could watch them in any order, which is kinda cool.

If you aren’t aware of it… This is a horror trilogy about two women who are obsessed with becoming famous. Pearl and Maxine. Pearl is about a young woman trying to get out of her tiny farm life in a post WWI, birth of cinema era. Bad things happen. It’s stylistically shot like an early technicolor musical and is bonkers. X is about Pearl’s family farm, where she is still stuck in 1974, (now in her 80s) when a tiny film crew shows up to rent out some of the farm buildings to shoot a porno. Among the cast, a woman named Maxine who really wants to be a star. Again, bad things happen and it turns into a bloodbath. MaXXXine is set 10 years after X, back in LA where Maxine is still hoping to become famous against the backdrop of 80s LA, the Nightstalker’s rampage, and the booming porn industry… and her past deeds that allowed her to survive the events of X, catch up with her. The kicker is, both Pearl and Maxine, at all ages, are played by Mia Goth.

Anybody else a fan? I loved House of the Devil, but hated everything else Ti West did as pretentious boring nonsense for years. Then he shocked me X being the best homage to Texas Chainsaw Massacre with its own oddball twist. Then I was absolutely blown away by the weirdness of Pearl. Trailer just dropped for MaXXXine, the third movie of this weird-ass trilogy and it does for 80s horror what Stranger Things did for vintage Spielberg. I'm amped for it.

It got a little dim here for 10 minutes. I bookmarked soooo many idiot IG reels by conspiracy theorists saying this was going to be some big world-ending event and now I get to spend my day going back and making fun of them like it's nightly in 2002.

Ha! They were part of the build-up to exhaustion!

It’s not MY argument, but it’s one out there. Well, the not caring about the handful of trans athletes is me, but I get what you’re saying. My bigger point is that people who ARE transphobic will use this as their core argument to politicize anti-trans legislation across the board because it is one of the few legit arguments out there.

Dude-- Carpenter is the GOAT The guy wrote and directed a movie every 1-2 years for 25 years straight. Half of those movies became cult hits. Even the bad ones are fun in their own way. Of those, two of them are considered to be among the most influential and classic horror films ever made. One of them, Halloween, literally started the slasher sub-genre. Then, after getting sick of studio interference, he says fuck it, retires early, and proudly plays video games for the next 20 years. Then what happens? Well all those movies he made he also did the music for, and retro synth music loves basically built the entire subgenre of dark wave/dark electro inspired by his music. So in his 70s, Carpenter comes out of retirement to tour as a rock star and score other people's movies. On top of all of that, he's curmudgeon that tells reporters to fuck off if they ask stupid questions. The guy is my hero.

1. How do so many gay males use the gay male speech dialect when they are from areas that the dialect is rare or even heavily prejudiced against? Its roots come from young boys feeling drawn to feminine role models and subconsciously effecting their voices. Once you get past the 50s, it started to show up in pop culture. It was always played as a joke in the 50s/60s, but there were icons in the 70s like Paul Lynn or JM J Bullock who were never straight out called gay, but coded as fuck. Once it hits pop culture it becomes an echo chamber. In straight spaces, where it may not be safe to be out, it could also be a form of signaling. 2. What is to stop men from taking advantage of trans-women competing in female sports? I hate this argument. I know YOU just posing it as a question, and not making the trans-phone argument, but this is a thing TERFs cling to as it is the only semi-legit way to attack trans people without coming off as an obvious transphobe. As a not-sports person my primary response is-- who cares? We're arguing about people's human rights and safety and a huge chunk of people can only respond by saying BUT SPORTS! There's less than a dozen cases of trans athletes facing adversity out there, across all sports on the planet. Maybe the answer is an open division, but we're decades away from that having any strength. Compare the dollar amount between the NBA and the WNBA and it's not even close. As for the LatinX thing-- if there's one thing I've learned living in LA, it's that minorities are often considered to be liberal democrats because traditionally, that's who fights for equal rights. But in reality, Hispanic and African American cultures are super conservative when you go as near back as baby boomers. They both have a heavy history of religion as it one of the few ways they could have a sense of community outside everyday (racist) life. I think Boomer hispanics, and any Gen-Xers that are not liberal, will resist new fangled terminology associated with woke folk. It's the younger generations that champion it, so the reactions you're talking about make total sense to me.

You can 100% hear Christine in there, bits of Escape from NY and too. It's all the vibes that ever vibed!

You read me wrong-- I'm HORROR first, sci-fi second. Or really, as the original and Aliens managed to pull off-- equal parts both.

I know the new one apparently takes place between Alien and Aliens, and while they haven't confirmed it, rumors say the female lead (seen with the pulse rifle in the trailer) is Ripley's daughter.

I'm amped that it it looks and feels like a horror movie, like the original... in a way that Prometheus and Covenant did not. Those movies had decent stories, but they weren't horror movies. They were sci-fi action movies with a couple horror scenes put in. I actually love Alvarez's Evil Dead remake, so I am pretty amped for this one.

Go on social media for a bit and you'll find yourself asking this question.

This is absurd. Also, makes total sense haha. I felt this way about the Jedi books/journals in TLJ. I saw a post about one of the newer shows having an outfit with a zipper and people were losing their minds. STAR WARS CANT HAVE ZIPPERS? Then somebody posted a clip of Luke zipping up his inflight suit in ESB.

Flash Gordon and Highlander, Queen crushed movies.

Trainspotting was epic when it came out and holds up pretty well.

I can agree with Choc, but also agree with both of you all at the same time. It DOES have that "fan film with a budget" vibe to it... but I remain (possibly foolishly) more optimistic about this over anything Filoni is responsible for.

I’m reading this book right now for research, but it’s pretty cool and I’m shocked it’s not more famous or was ever adapted into a movie. It’s Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore. It basically does for werewolves what Dracula did for vampires. Published in the 1930s, it’s not the first werewolf story ever published, but it pre-dates the first werewolf movies, and clearly served as some inspiration. It’s sort of the blueprint for all werewolf tropes in modern pop culture. Like Dracula it took bits of mythology from around the world, combined it with a historical figure of sorts, and turned it into a horror story with a fair amount of gore, violence, incest, other fun stuff. It’s only recently back in print, so if you’re a werewolf nerd, grab it.

It looks a little Kung-Fu for me, but it's a new era we haven't seen, so maybe it's cool if it has a bit of a stylistic shift. I WISH it was the far future of the SW we know, but I;'ll take the past. As I mentioned before, I have a friend who wrote on this. She hasn't told me any details other than that for the most part it was a fun ride, but they wrote the whole season years ago at this point and she was nowhere near shooting-- but the main thing is that Leslie Hedlund, the show runner, is pretty big fan girl and she wanted to hit the familiar tropes and ideas, but also wanted to mix it up. So hopefully that comes across.

Almost the entire day has passed and no one has made a thread about the trailer dropping!?

My top 5 SCORES: 1. Halloween 3 (Movie is a mess, but if you're into John Carpenter music it's low-key his best and you can hear hints of so many of his other great themes being worked out. It's only missing the classic Halloween theme. To that-- 2. Halloween 2018 (Carpenter revisits his classic theme and score with a more modern sensibility. I work to this constantly) 3. Fight Club (Dust Bros. doing the Millennial break beat thing, love it for the gym) 4. Wrath of Khan (Even though Horner plagiarizes himself regularly and the best bits of this score are recycled in Aliens and Cocoon, it's still burned into my brain). 5. Tron Legacy (One of the most epic scores ever. Daft Punk, who I normally appreciate and enjoy more than love, made an electro masterpiece). *-- John Williams honorable mention. (TBH, it's kind of a no brainer that Williams in his prime did some of the most cinematic themes out there. I can't name one. I don't really ever put him on to listen to, but there's literally no other composer of whom I can instantly think of at least 5-6 iconic themes they are responsible for. Star Wars, Jaws, Close encounter, Raiders, Superman-- I mean come on. **-- Honorable mention two, Danny Elfman. I don't love all his scores by any means, but the Batman theme was so iconic, and for a time he was so unique in his compositions, he deserves some credit. My Top 5 SOUNDTRACKS: 1. Purple Rain (no explanation needed) 2. Top Gun (don't listen to it as much these days, but back then it was on constant repeat) 3. Natural Born Killers (Trent Reznor made a mix tape!) 4. Any Tarantino Movie (the guy knows how to drop the needle) 5. Repo Man (no lie, my introduction to punk music as an 80s kid)