What movie are you viewing at the moment?

[Dropped52]

Originally Posted by MrLinc

Just finished watching "Avengers: Infinity War".
Laughed my ass off several times throughout the movie. Besides that, I loved the script and the way it was translated into a visual story. I wonder how the story will continue.

I might have to dig further back but having not seen avengers, any of them, I know guardians of the galaxy were in this one. Any thoughts on the whole gunn debocal? If I spelled that wrong apologies in advance.

On a lighter note I'm hoping to watch deadpool 2 again tonight. Loved it in theaters, alot of cool cameos in it from the xforce realm.

[deepsepia]

Chi-raq . . .

Spike Lee's take on Lysistra.

This is really good, and reminds me that I underestimated Lee. He turns a lot of people off because he seems in your face polemical, and that included me. But watching him more, I get something different. He's "formal" in a theatrical sense, more like a stage play than a movie sensibility. I didn't get that at first-- he just seemed heavy handed to me, but now I see he's doing something really subtle, even when he seems really obvious.

His characters are a little David Mamet like, talking to you about what they're going to do, not so much "natural dialogue" a series of set pieces.

This is probably the most beautiful to look at of Lee's movies. Samuel L. Jackson in Orange suit and green hat is a wonder, a bit of a griot-shaman-oracle. One of the neat tricks that Lee is doing is weaving contemporary hip-hop into much more ancient traditions of epic poetry, which is a genuinely interesting idea.

Recommended, something different, and its a movie that simultaneously technically clever and also "about something". This isn't hacks just phoning in another rom-com, this is heartfelt.

[Captain ron]

Stripes

[rosestone]

The kind of movie that's usually filed under 'thought provoking sci-fi' (ie it's sci-fi with no explosions), I knew what was going to happen in this flick from the get-go because I've done some reading about AI, and I could see where director Alex Garland was headed. (Potentially some mild spoilers coming up).

Nevertheless, I enjoyed it, with a couple of reservations. The 'atmosphere' of the movie is excellent, the music, lighting etc make for an engrossing watch, and Garland is clearly a talented writer (to be expected from a man who began as a novelist).

The reservations: firstly, why does the AI have to have a humanoid robot body? If we are expected to believe that it is the work of one man (and we are expected to believe this), he has actually achieved two separate and world-changing scientific advances, on his own, in a short space of time - unless in this version of reality, humanoid robots are already around, which they don't seem to be (a computer programmer seems surprised to learn of their existence)........but I'll give them benefit of the doubt on that one.

Second reservation, are the two main characters. Both performances by the actors are fantastic (Oscar Isaac and Domnhall Gleeson), but both characters had what I would consider to be contradictory character traits that stretched credibility imo:

Isaac's character, by all accounts a genius who is on the verge of the greatest invention in human history, gets blind-drunk every day, conveniently incapacitating him for periods of time. I don't believe that such a man would be an alcoholic, even an extremely high-functioning one. To have created AI, alone, he would need to be utterly single-minded. I just don't buy such a man being a drunk - was Einstein getting leathered every day while theorising about relativity? Was Newton getting pissed as a newt writing his mathematical equations? I'd say not.

Second is Gleeson's character, who is extremely intelligent when the story needs him to be, and then conveniently dense, also when it helps the story along - even to the point that the character can analyse how he is being manipulated, while still allowing himself to be manipulated. If he's smart enough to calculate when the train is coming down the tracks, I'd think he would also be smart enough to step out of the way before it gets to him.

Still, nicely done, and worth a watch.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by rosestone

The reservations: firstly, why does the AI have to have a humanoid robot body?

The singularity is. . . sexbots.

We've known that for 100 years, not doing all this work for a goddam Roomba



. . . by coincidence its "Metropolis" tonight

[Rogerbh]

I watched "Land of Mine" (2015) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Mine - Young Wehrmacht soldiers (look like 16 year-olds) after the war are forced to remove mines from a Danish beach. The female farm owner who is paid to feed them and the Danish Sergeant who watches them - hate them. While slowly starving them and watching them get blown up, feelings fluctuate. Only four of the 14 who started this beach clearing are alive at the finish. The Sergeant's promise that they will get to go home after they finish is overruled and they are sent to another, much harder beach where many prisoners have been blown up. The movie ends when the Sergeant rescues them and releases them 500 meters from the German border. This movie is derived from the fact that 2,000 Germans were used to clear mines from Denmark with slightly under half of them dying or being maimed in the process after WW2 ended.

I can't think that many people will watch this twice unless they are sadists.

2.5 out of 5 from me. Watching young kids die, crying for their moms, not something that I enjoy.

[rosestone]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

The singularity is. . . sexbots.

We've known that for 100 years, not doing all this work for a goddam Roomba

Lol, maybe, and wife and I actually had an argument/discussion about this after watching the movie, because wife said it was important that the AI was 'female' (because men are so easy to manipulate and blah blah), I said that was not the point, the point was that the AI was able to.........actually I should stop there for fear of spoilers, but wife did acknowledge that I had a point, which is a bloody miracle in and of itself.

I must admit that I take a certain degree of (very quiet) satisfaction when wife and other women get a little bit nervy talking about sexbots (weird sentence, but stick with me) - because as soon as men can have their own private Pamela Anderson or whoever, women know that they won't be able to sell the old 'Men are only interested in one thing, so therefore I'm entitled to behave like a deranged harridan' shtick. Because they know he'll just say, ok, see you later then, I'm off to stick it in some robo-vage (a line of dialogue sorely missing from 'Ex Machina').

Equally, when a woman can have her own George Clooney in the cupboard at home who tells her how wonderful and beautiful she is and no, of course she doesn't look fat in that outfit and she's prettier than all those women she hates, will women ever need to bother with men ever again?

[Mal Hombre]

As so often before,Futurama was there first..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrrADTN-dvg

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by rosestone

Lol, maybe, and wife and I actually had an argument/discussion about this after watching the movie, because wife said it was important that the AI was 'female' (because men are so easy to manipulate and blah blah), I said that was not the point, the point was that the AI was able to.........actually I should stop there for fear of spoilers, but wife did acknowledge that I had a point, which is a bloody miracle in and of itself.

I must admit that I take a certain degree of (very quiet) satisfaction when wife and other women get a little bit nervy talking about sexbots (weird sentence, but stick with me) - because as soon as men can have their own private Pamela Anderson or whoever, women know that they won't be able to sell the old 'Men are only interested in one thing, so therefore I'm entitled to behave like a deranged harridan' shtick. Because they know he'll just say, ok, see you later then, I'm off to stick it in some robo-vage (a line of dialogue sorely missing from 'Ex Machina').

Equally, when a woman can have her own George Clooney in the cupboard at home who tells her how wonderful and beautiful she is and no, of course she doesn't look fat in that outfit and she's prettier than all those women she hates, will women ever need to bother with men ever again?

Hah. The funny thing is that women probably could do without men biologically-- we're pretty close to being able to fertilize an egg with another egg.

You raise a good point about sex and robots . . . The fantasy of the man falling in love with an automaton is way older than electronics. Its the Pygmalion myth and there are any number of variations over the millennia. One of the interesting things about "Ex Machina" is the classical reference in the title, I remember thinking "that's odd for an SF film", but as you say, Alex Garland is plenty sharp, he's a writer and this is way more than a hack job; I'm a big fan of this movie.

So far as I know, there's no equivalent mythology for women with a mechanical man . . . I think they do OK with just a portion . . . and it doesn't need to talk. Pinnochio is the closest to a male equivalent (note the oversized organ . . .)

[Rogerbh]

Originally Posted by Mal Hombre

As so often before,Futurama was there first..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrrADTN-dvg

Kirk was there earlier too - “Requiem for Methuselah.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RiaibRump0