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RedLetterMedia Reviews Star Wars and more
superboyac:
I'm going to attempt to defend this guy:
Yes, his reviews are very negative and critical. BUT...it doesn't mean he's wrong. He's actually very knowledgeable as far as story structure goes. He knows what he is talking about. I think he's pretty right on with most everything.
However, with so much negativity, I can see why a lot of people would be turned off. It would be nice if he also did as in-depth interviews of what he considered to be very good movies. I know this better than anyone, it's easy to be critical and negative. It's hard to say something is great, it almost takes more courage. At least for me. I always find my knee-jerk reaction is to be critical, and now I'm working on balancing it out by also acknowledging things that are good.
Still, he's pretty good, I'm learning a lot through his reviews.
nudone:
seemed a lot like shooting fish in a barrel to me. so there are lots of plot holes and pointless story events in the Star Wars films. really? so they aren't comparable to the classic works of Shakespeare. who ever would have thought that.
the reviews are funny but shoot at easy targets. i'd be interested to see in depth reviews of the more accepted movie "classics". using Star Wars/Trek is obviously the best way of bringing in a large crowd - reviewing Citizen Kane won't give you so many hits - i assume.
if you didn't sit through all three Star Wars prequels thinking "this plot is total nonsense" then you must have left your brain at home. that didn't stop me enjoy the films though.
complaining about all the greenscreen cgi is a bit b*llocks too. you've always had to suspend your disbelief when watching a movie. we didn't have trouble watching the old Ray Harryhausen stop-animation films, the monsters were obviously not in the live scene - same applies to today's effects. use your imagination and blend the real and fake together, believe me, it will help you enjoy the film a lot more.
i do agree with his comments about direction though. Lucas has lost it. or maybe he's the complete master at it - the prequels are there to keep the franchise going; films that will look pretty on your 50 inch plasma for years to come - just very expensive adverts with similar direction, plot and editing to any other clever advert.
i actually thought "Attack of the Clones" was the best out of the prequels. yeah, even the crappy love story element. the battle scenes were fantastic; i can't remember now what else i liked - oh, that bit when Yoda started fighting with his Light Saber, intellectually it was embarrassing to see, but my heart was pounding and i nearly had tears in my eyes because i allowed it to move me. that's what you have to do sometimes - like experiencing any kind of "art", you have to make a few allowances and try and get into the mind of the artist that created the work.
40hz:
Picked one at random and ended up watching the Nemesis recap.
Sounded pretty spot on to me. And not particularly over the top. I guess he's either toned down the insanity and bathroom 'humor'; or I just happened to catch the one review where there wasn't much. Guess I'll reserve judgment on that part until I watch a few more.
Confession: I was never much of a Star Trek fan. And I've never been overly impressed by the films.
Which is a problem.
Because I watch each installment I get dragged to as a movie. I don't ever experience that ritual bonding 'thing' the Trek diehards seem to get out if it. So having somebody eviscerate a Trek feature film for being a bad movie - and a bad story - is a welcome relief AFAIC. Especially since most reviewers focus on everything BUT how poorly written the storylines are.
I know there is the need to willingly "suspend disbelief" in order to understand and appreciate speculative fiction. But when logical development of a plot gets thrown out the window, or when internal inconsistencies make me stop and say "What???", my paused disbelief gets re-enabled pretty quickly.
About the best thing I can say for the TNG films is that the directors finally gave the Deanna Troi character a decent hairdo.
But maybe that's just me.
Why don't you be the judge?
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Addendum: one of my favorite sites for cranky reviews (film/TV/books) is the improbably named Pajiba ("Scathing Reviews, Bitchy People") website. Nice to read something that's snarky and well written. For once.
Excerpt from their About page follows for anyone who may be interested:
SpoilerWho is Pajiba?
Quite simply, Pajiba is an eclectic set of critics and eloquent readers. Check out the staff page if you simply must know more.
What of Pajiba?
For reasons we’d rather not go into, we can’t actually tell you what Pajiba means but, should Pajiba catch fire and become a national phenomenon, we would like you to know that it is pronounced like a part of the female anatomy, if you have a bit of a cold, which makes it an awfully enjoyable word to say (try it, out loud, in your cubicle). Any other pronunciation makes us bristle, hack, and contort our faces in very unpleasant ways, particularly those pronunciations that involve long e’s. Please do not pronounce it Pajeeba in front of the publisher; he has a felony record.
Based ostensibly in Portland, Maine, Pajiba has offices (and by “offices,” we mean guys and gals writing reviews on kitchenette tables in their overpriced hovels or in their cubicles during office hours) around North America. If you lurk in the comments section for any length of time, you’ll also notice that we have several regular commenters (often referred to as The Eloquents) who make their own valuable contributions to the Pajiba experience. They are scattered across the country, and you can add your place among them, geographically.
Pajiba is a film, book, and television review site, though we used to feature weekly political commentary as well. Unfortunately, our political column was shut down by the Bush Administration through a little-used clause in the Patriot Act. (We still attempt to sneak a few political pieces by Homeland Security, on occasion.) For real, though; in May of 2006, we were temporarily shut down when DHS seized our hard drives.
--- End quote ---
Note: If their temporary shutdown in May of 2006 by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security piques your curiosity, here's the story on that:
SpoilerI’ll start, offering up a short explanation for one of the more common questions asked around these parts:
Department of Homeland Security: Cabinet department of the U.S. federal government with the responsibility of protecting the territory of the U.S. from terrorist attacks and responding to natural disasters. In May 2005, under the Bush administration, DHS mysteriously seized the hard drives of the server Pajiba then resided on, offering no explanation nor ever returning hard drive (several other sites also resides on the server). The site was rebuilt from Google caches, and any and all comments prior to May 2005, as well as a handful of comments and our short-lived political section, were forever lost.
--- End quote ---
Apparently they were yet another innocent bystander victim of a drive-by government cyber-shooting in the War on Terror during the Bush/Chaney Error Era. ;)
superboyac:
Nice one , 40. Pajiba looks nice, I like it.
40hz:
Nice one , 40. Pajiba looks nice, I like it.
-superboyac (January 04, 2011, 09:24 AM)
--- End quote ---
Glad to hear! :)
It's also a potentially useful source site too. One business acquaintance of mine has garnered a reputation for being one "smart & sassy" conversationalist by making a habit of parroting back phrases and opinions she's obviously picked up from there.
She tends to be a bit full of herself most times...
I'm waiting for the day somebody else figures out her 'source' and calls her on it in something reminiscent of that exchange between Matt Damon and the pseudo intellectual poseur in the film Good Will Hunting.
It's gonna be a painful scene. Hope I'm NOT around to see it happen.
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