I watched the first two episodes of this show on a free HBO window from Xfinity. I could not watch anymore. It was so utterly goony. It seemed every nerd fantasy genre fetish was packed into this show that it became a parody of itself.
He deserves obscurity for inflicting Annie Lennox on us at the end of the LOTR.
Seriously, has there ever been an uglier vocal rendering of a song? She doesn't sing Into the West as much as shriek it. Couldn't they have thrown her in after Gollum?
Basil Poledouris:
Yes, yes and yes. Conan the Barbarian and Lonesome Dove are amazing scores. Half of Conan's value comes from the soundtrack.
When I watched the retouched versions, I honestly find the Greedo incident the least of the my complaints. Han shooting first or second doesn't change the moral calculus of the scene, so why bother? Why bother changing it, why bother getting upset about it? The big problems are all the scenes that Lucas cluttered with CGI crap. Hardscrabble Mos Eisley sets with a few characters are now filled with screaming Jawas restraining dinosaurs. Then there's the stupid scenes with Jabba. What did they add to the movie? Nothing. Anything said there was covered by Greedo. It's why it wasn't in the first release, duh.
There was one great CGI shot, where X-Wings fly around the Gas planet to attack the Death Star, but otherwise? Feh.
I think that was "Common."
I still think Laura San Giacomo would have been a better pick than Hayek, but still worth a look.
I was amazed watching Tora!Tora!Tora! recently. The battle scenes in that movie were first rate. The only cheat was reusing a bit of the same footage a couple of times. I don't need to see a P-40 blown up on take-off three times. Amazing how a movie that 40 years old is still superior to most of the stuff coming out these days.
White audiences don't want to see the movie because they know they'll be subjected to yet another guilt-a-thon. Sorry, George, I already have to attend "diversity" and "respect" sessions at work. I'm sure not going to shell out another 30-40 bucks for yet another one, especially since we already had a movie about the Tuskegee airmen. Add on to this how much their story was unnecessarily embellished over the past few decades (such as claims that they never lost a bomber they escorted), the shine has sort of faded from the apple.
Meanwhile, we still have plenty of stories in WWII that could be told. No one that I know has done a good film on the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the biggest naval battle in history. The military channel runs a show called "The Greatest Tank Battles", every single show from that series would make a wonderful background for a movie.
Guthrie was writing anti-war songs in the thirties. He switched positions in 1941. Not in December 1941, mind you, but in June 1941. Why June? Was he prescient? No, he switched in June because that's when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, nullifying the Hitler-Stalin pact. Thus all the good commies in the U.S. had to turn on a dime and go from being anti-war to pro-war.
Don't give this guy credit he doesn't deserve. He was a treasonous dick.
I don't know why everyone likes the Swedish films. I mean, casting Tom Cruise as the punky chick was a gutsy move, I grant, but there's no way the plot was anything but laughably predictable. The reporter was a hopeless Mary Sue, even to the point of wanting to cuddle with the damaged goods chick. The villains were a ridiculous set of cut-outs that followed the rote lefty checklist of EVIL WHITE MEN EVERYWHERE. We're supposed to be worried about people raping and killing women? Hey, it ain't Swedish industrialists. It's a more recent import that's your real problem there--but that would be verboten to discuss.
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