one Dara Ó Briain

In my (apparently) continuing trek to see British (and adjacent) comedians, I attended the show of Dara Ó Briain!

Now I'm not going to repeat his material, because a) it's his, and b) I would do it crappily. But there were two hours of laughs, so in short, it was great! It was basically a few big stories, but he had plenty of time to talk with audience members, which made me glad I wasn't in the front row. I hope those people had an expectation they might be picked on, because if you are there, you are in the firing line.

He said this wasn't one of his usual shows (because of a certain world wide event that interrupted his usual process of gaining material - basically by living it), so I guess I need to check out one of his "usual shows" next time he is in town.

As expected, a great show, so if you have the chance...

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The Kreater

So is John David Washington getting stereotyped as the guy you have in your overly long science fiction movie with lots of effects?

Humanity is immediately a terrible species and deserves to die entirely. Fortunately, the AI robots have this thing whereby they have an extreme MacGuffin that can solve the situation (rather finally). And so we have the movie which is "protect the MacGuffin" while humans are terrible and there are a lot of robot effects going on to deal with.

Which, while glib, doesn't portray the movie's content, which is rather enjoyable. This is over two hours, with no real need (there is a LOT of travelling from one place to another which could have been abbreviated), and we aren't talking startling plot points that you can't immediately tell from the trailer, but I was actually watching the whole time, despite watching this on my computer. (Which isn't to say I wasn't distracted at times, but hey I got things going on.)

Good casting there, and nice to see Allison Janney as Evil Military Lady.

This might be a big movie at the moment... but I don't see this having lasting power.

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Oppy Heimer Style

So this is the other half of that event. At least I could control the sound assaulting me.

This is the big event as through the eyes of one of the big men involved. With splitting (sic) between getting to the bomb, and the other part dealing with the fallout (sic). And... it goes on and on.

It's not surprising that this didn't need to be three hours. A lot of scenes could be cut and still get the point. With this sort of movie, the physics don't really matter, so you can skip a lot of that to get the emotional point. [And don't tell me they didn't abridge the physics. I don't care Nolan modelled a black hole, there's no way you are spending time educating people on quantum physics enough to understand everything, so if we are able to skip some detail, we can skip more.]

As we are post-bomb, while this movie is starring Cillian Murphy, this is also Robert Downey Jr.'s movie. There are quite a few big names here, and as for the women... wow, Nolan has trouble with woman, but basically we have Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh, and that's about it. I do wonder if Pugh would have agreed to this script if it wasn't Nolan, 'cos I'm not sure we needed those scenes with her either.

This is two (related) movies shoved into one. To be honest, I found the second one, the trial, far more interesting that the first, the bomb. No doubt the first one had to be told, but as background to the second, compress it and explode the second.

Oh, and speaking of Nolan, I still need to watch Dunkirk...

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Teh Mavrels

I waited a day or two so I could see this in IMAX... can't say that I felt I got a special experience from that.

What's the plot of this? From watching the trailers, there is something about Rambeau, Danvers and Khan switching with each other, but the plot apart of that... watching this movie, I had no idea of what to expect, so had no idea about anything that turned up and if it was important or not. I will say the Kree are back, because of course they are, but they are nearly background to the emotional story of Marvels... but that said, I have a big complaint about the story.

It is a mess. It's almost like a different writer wrote each different scene, to the degree that I wouldn't be surprised if the writers changed per line! The tonal whiplash between moments is amazing, and the comedy of Khan is competing against the earnest story of Danvers and Rambeau... even in the same scene! And whenever Khan's family is on screen, expect them to dominate whatever is going on, so much that it's good to know that a comedy Pakastani family can defeat Kree troops.

This also comes through with continuity, in that I'm not sure this movie has any. There were many moments where I was "hey, that doesn't make sense" which is not what you want during the movie. Afterwards, sure, but not during.

I'm not crying "this is the end of the MCU!" or anything, but this could do with a serious re-edit (and I understand it has already gone through reshoots). I was kinda worried when I heard this was delayed that there would have been plenty of time to muck around with it, but I do wonder how bad it was if this is what we ended up with.

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Grant Urismo

Hey, look, it's an ad... and a documentary... an adumentary!

Jann is a kid that likes to drive on the most recent version of the car game (which he didn't actually have at the time) and gets to be in a competition. He wins by the blur of his car, so goes on to race, gets in a terrible accident, but goes on to win big!

Mostly... at least, that's what the movie portrays, the actual order was slightly different but that wasn't as flowing a story for the movie. Eh, these things happen, and it could be worse what they did. The movie abbreviates a lot of events and characters, but that's de rigour for these sorts of things.

While Archie Madekwe does great work as Jann, he's completely overshadowed whenever David Harbour is on screen. And Orlando Bloom is just there for kicks, as far as I can tell. There are other cameos from big names, but the main stars is... the game!

I mean the car! There is a lot of car graphics in this, and yes, they are really well done. Jann originally played on the PS3, so there's no way they look as good then as they do now. Especially with the money now behind them (and no doubt the latest games, which this is an ad for, likely had more money spent on it that on this money).

If you like car racing, this is a great movie for you, and as "based on a true story" it gets more cred for being a good movie than other general car racing movies.

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Exorcism Belieber

Remember how in the Exorcist movies/books, it's all about the battle between good and evil, what are they, can you believe in god? How about we just throw some demon possessed children in there and call it a day?

Two girls go missing, and when they turn up, they seem a bit weird. Then they seem a bit possessed... which is glossing over the first hour of this movie quickly, because the movie certainly doesn't. The point is the discussion of what the demons mean, not spending an hour getting to the point where there is a demon!

You may recall from previous discussions, that I am interested in seeing other religions represented and how the myths of one would deal with the practices of the other, and the answer is... Super Easy, Barely An Inconvenience! Everyone gets together and tolerates one another, and there is no discussion of what differing beliefs might mean. Phew, the movie nearly had something interesting to say! (Not to mention how easy it is to get two seemingly mentally traumatised children from the hospital, did no-one think that was a problem?)

There are some cameos here from the earlier movies, and... it just shows that according to this movie, the trappings are what's important, not the content. But hey, money to be made, so let's churn 'em out!

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