Not really TV, I know (and I may need to move this thread to a different category), but I am off to see Captain America : Civil War today.
Iāve spent the last few weeks boning up on the MCU, so itās safe to say that I couldnāt be more primed or pumped for this. I hear itās good. Very very good.
As threatened earlier, Iāve been out to see Civil War. Iāve liked all the Captain America films so far, although itās more accurate to describe this one as an all out Marvel film. Itās a direct sequel to both Winter Soldier, the fantastic conspiracy themed Marvel film and Age of Ultron, the good but not superb sequel to Avengers.
Iāve read the huge Civil War event in the comics, and while this is nowhere near as broad as the stories it summarises, the distillation is superb. After all the carnage caused in the previous movies, the UN wants to regulate all costumed heroes. Anyone not registered canāt do their thing no more on pain of arrest and incarceration.
Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, is wracked with guilt with previous dick calls he has made, decides that making another dick call is the way forward, signing up for the UN plan. Capās not so sure, especially after he sees some of the implementation.
At precisely this moment, a crisis is engineered which means that many of our unregistered heroes need to to do their stuff regardless, leading to conflict between previous pals. The action scenes are great, but what distinguishes the Captain America films from a lot of the other Marvel stuff are the sort of villains he faces. In most Marvel films, you have an established big bad, usually the arch nemesis from the comic, and that was true of the first Cap film.
The last two Cap films have been far more interesting. Winter Soldier was an antagonist, but not the real villain of the film bearing his name. This movie does have a villain, but heās just pulling the strings. The conflict in this movie is driven by a shit situation, which for various reasons, puts people on one side or the other.
Definitely not a self-contained movie. To get the most out of it, you really need to have seen the lot, even Ant-Man (great in this), but mostly, you just need to understand that Tony Stark is a dick 
As someone steeped in this latest batch of movies, I thought it was excellent.
Cool Pap , will take the middlest offspring this weekend. Heās seen most of the Marvel films but not Ant Man as yet so will try and squeeze that in after homework . Maybe a refresher Winter soldier as well.
Good to see the incredibles getting a nod though 
I am up to date with Gotham. Iām getting a bit bored with the usual style of review, so Iām going to honour fellow capeshit geek Dubai Phil with this one. Phil used to watch Once Upon a Time once upon a time, and would consistently enquire how the mad medley of ideas had come to be, normally attributing it to some recreational chemical inspiration.
Now I canāt back any of this up. I have nothing in the way of sources, paperwork or compromising imagery. Itās all ridiculous speculation, but what I reckon they do is lock the writers in the room with a load of Frank Miller Batman, the Burton and Nolan films, and a fuckton of Colombian Marching Powder.
Itās the only logical explanation for many of the choices they have made.
Getting to the end of the season now. If you like the Batman universe, this is a fun, if not exactly realistic portrayal. I canāt say that itās a great show, but I do enjoy it loads.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D season three wrapped this week. An unexpectedly satisfying ending to an already solid season. Being based on the Buffy template, each season carries a big bad. This one in particular seemed a little borrowed from season four of Angel, at least in terms of what it was capable of and what its overall plans were. That season of Angel felt a little made up as it went along. something this show cannot be accused of. This has been simmering for at least a season.
Thereās very little freak of the week stuff in Agents of SHIELD that doesnāt serve an overall arc. Gotham is pulling that trick quite nicely as well. It seems a sensible way to address the needs of a 22 episodes a season show, yet maintaining some kind of forward momentum.
This show will be due a shakeup. After the conclusion of the main plot, events jump six months into the future with many aspects seemingly changed. Our female lead is now a fugitive from the law, which I would expect to be a result of Civil War, already referenced this season. Very cool that this show is part of the MCU.
Do you want to know why vicars, and Tom Cruise, are randomly exploding?
Do you think a chick could make a buzooka out of tin cans, and take down a helicopter?
Have you ever seen a kid with a butthole for a mouth?
Watch āPREACHERā srs. Itās fucked up. All those things happened srs.
Quite a promising pilot. I watched this with the missus last night. She loves Dominic Cooper from other stuff, but I can confirm that all the Bear says above is true.
The chap with the arse for a face apparently tried committing suicide with a shotgun in his mouth, but survived.
Agent X
Secret Freemason type conspiracy where the US Constitution has a hidden clause & the VP has (her) own super agent able to do things even the CIA cannot do.
Sharon Stone stars as the Veep. Clearly comes from a Capeshit background somewhere. Itās kind of an OK timefiller (as in itās better than watching Iron Chef), but the problem is that itās the Veep, Superspy and a Kelsey Grammar lookalike doing everything themselves.
It does have a highly gymnastic & double jointed Russian āAgentā of some description in it - and yes one does get to think some nawty thoughts about Olga, but the problem is they kind of filmed it in a Capeshit way instead of a Jason Bourne way and it is just so fluffy. It got canned after one season, worth a download to fill in the days between other stuff (and to have bad double jointed thoughts) but it COULD have been really good.
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Olga Fonda is a model and actress. At age 14, she left her hometown for a year to be an exchange student in the United States. After returning home, she continued her education by studying Business-Economics at a university in Moscow. The brainy beauty began modeling after she returned to the States and was quickly signed by Ford Models when they ā¦ See full bio Ā»
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In fact - with this whole flood of Capeshit style shows hitting the screens, why are they all so āshinyā What happened to gritty lighting? House style for example. Is this some 4K UHD issue we now have to face? DC legends was the same, as are the clips I have seen from the likes of Flash.
Oh for some Inspector Morse style natural watery sunlight instead of some Arc-Light lit Vancouver parking lot
Oh wait a moment, there is a properly filmed TV show at the moment. Game of Thrones.
And of course much of it is filmed away from Canada
Wow that Olga sure is skinnyā¦
Letās try this
Not seen these trailers before
Iāll be waiting for reviews from respected Star Trek nerds before Beyond gets any of my time. Into Darkness was an abomination.
Seems early previewers are not subject to an embargo unlike Independence Day 2 & Ghostbusters.
Early tweets saying it more than hits the spot like a TOS episode with a mega star cast action & world class effects & they arenāt on Earth!
āItās not perfect but it rocksā "should have been the prequel to 03 movie etc
Lots of homage to TOS in Simon Peggās script
8 days to go canāt wait
More of Netflixās excellent Marvel run coming soon, taking place in the same universe as Daredevil and Jessica Jones.
We already know Luke Cage a lil bit from Jessica Jones.
Next up, weāve got Iron Fist (Iāve never read any of this in the comics)
Finally, weāve got a teaser for Defenders, which is the 2017 show thatāll tie them all together in a sort of TV Avengers.
Originally posted by @BTripz
EPIC absolutely brilliant.
Bloody LOVED it.
Possibly the best overall ST film.
Damn we enjoyed that. Get off your assessment & see it in 3D or I MAX but see it on a big screen TODAY!
(Then you can have the joy of going again tomorrow!)
Weāve all liked the new Star Wars because they didnāt fuck it up. Trek 3 just is a 2 hour TOS episode
All the original Star Trek TV series now available on Netflix should anyone want to. I watched the very first episode in an advanced state of stupefaction the other night - it was enjoyable.
OK so the post cinema euphoria is over after being dragged round Carrefour to do the monthly shopping
So how to do a review for you without Spoilers? Well. firstly I stayed away from all the trailers and all the online reviews etc. So I knoew some snippets but that was all. Secondly, the only snippet I did read was a recommendation to watch it at Imax and sit as high up as possible in the theatre to get the full impact. We did and I recommend it.
At stupid oāclock on a weekend morning (10am) the Cinema was 95% empty - which meant only actual fans were there so no numpties on phones.
No spoiler review? Simples - Not ONE person left their seat until the Credits had finished.
So, most movies these days are by and large formulaic. Good v Evil, Evil v Good etc etc. Here we are with a Franchise movie, so, by default, it will be Formulaic.
Itās almost as if Gene Roddenberry patented a formula when the first movie was made and Writers & Directors have had their hands tied to follow that. That is a criticism of the movie. HOWEVER, unlike The Force Awakens, the joy?/excitement?/entertainment? in Beyond is that Simon Pegg et al have manged to not re-write Into Darkness or even the damned ST 1 with Voyager. The actual core of this story is new.
It pays homage to the Episodic feel of TV Trek, it does feel as if you are watching the greatest episode of ST ever made. No sign of Earth for one thing.
It has a beginning, it has some depth, and it has some great humour, especially early on.
A lot of the film was shot in Canada and you can see that, equally as you will remember, a lot of it was shot here in Dubai. And WOW, what a job they did with it.
No Spoilers, but the beauty of the cinematography/CGI is that they actually did pay some homage to us, they left in little ālandmarkbitesā (all out of context but there Burj Al Arab was there in the middle of town instead of the sea.
They sent āFirst Spockā on his way with feeling, McCoy develops and the whole gay Sulu thing? Well technically I suppose you could say a 2 seconds shot may indicate that.
Kudos to Simon Pegg & Co, and also to the whole crew who took the movie from concept to completion in less than 18 months.
IMHO I believe that non-Trek fans could watch this film in isolation and will enjoy it. In terms of rating it? When I compare our reaction leaving the cinema to that after Star Wars it was utterly different.
For Star Wars our reaction was - āWell they didnāt fuck that upā.
For Trek - āWow just fucking wowā, followed by how do we get Netflix here to see the new series
If you didnāt like Darkness (which I still think is a good film) do NOT let that put you off seeing this on the Big Screen. Iām old enough to remember watching TOS Season 1 on a black & white TV.
I can tell you I rated this film as a 12 out of 10. Normal humans will probably settle around 7.5 as an average
If I had to be picky? The show opened with a World Wide Preview of Rihannaās new single - Sledgehammer - which is the Movie Theme song (Departure from formula there!) Love or hate her, the CGI crew from Trek did make a bloody good Video. As for the song? Biggest praise has to be - it wasnāt as bad as last James Bond The Spectre Song. Nearly but not as bad.
Oh.
Long live Rock & Roll
Oh and besides Rihanna, one other massive moment todayā¦
The first full Rogue One trailer.
Oooooooh
A balanced NO SPOILER review that does deal with some of the nit picking nerds could find in the film
For me this was the first visual that indicated something more, Warp drive side on view - not seen before
The new warp effect is an impressive standout among the filmās stunning visuals. (Paramount Pictures)
In fact I DO agree with this :-
The visual effects in_STAR TREK BEYOND _quite simply set a new standard for Star Trek films. Double Negative, the effects house responsible for the award-winning work seen in Interstellar and Ex Machina, has created a new world in the Yorktown space station that rivals anything ever seen on screen.
And yet we could still recognise it as Dubai yet in a way that added a warm fuzzy feeling rather than a āyou fucked up the CGIā way
http://trekcore.com/blog/2016/07/star-trek-beyond-embraces-treks-fifty-year-legacy/
At its heart, though, STAR TREK BEYOND is about the core relationships that have bound the crew of the Enterprise in tales spanning half a century.
The film integrates and honors the passing of Leonard Nimoy in a number of emotional scenes, while never ignoring the critical backstory laid out in the previous two films surrounding the destruction of Vulcan.
Nimoyās loss is felt throughout the film. His absence resonates emotionally and powerfully, but is also celebrated in a tear-inducing scene that is more than worthy of this franchise benchmark.
In the simplest terms, the humor, action and pacing of this film will satisfy both summer movie aficionados and hardcore Trek purists alike. The film is epic and balanced, kinetic and thoughtful, and connects Trek across 50 years of continuity in ways that could never have been expected.
Itās an exceptionally worthy mic drop for Star Trekās golden anniversary.
Justice League looking better than BvS on this evidence.
