Despite what you may assume about me, I don't normally have empeg-related dreams. But last night I had one, it was odd. I was at an empeg meet, and Penn Jilette was there. We talked about Blackjack card counting and John Carmack, and the winnings money he donated to the Free Software Foundation that one time.

Okay, so it's not VERY empeg-related.

Hey, it could have been worse.

I did like the Spider-Man 2 movie, though. Gonna see I, Robot tonight. Good summer for movies.

Thunderbirds on Friday!!!

Too cool! Gonna have to see that too.

Yeah, that will be fine if you are, like, 12. The first reviews of Thunderbirds are starting to come in and it looks like it is going to be a bad kid-oriented movie. Not too surprising; if they can screw up a much better starting premise like I Robot like they have, I don't think something like Thunderbirds stands a chance. It's more a surprise when they don't screw up the existing source material like Harry Potter or Spiderman.

Really, with the exception of Bourne Supremecy, which might be decent, I don't see any other good big movies coming out except Jet Li's Hero coming up in mid-August. Oh well.

Jet Li movies are good now? In my opinion, all of his recent Hollywood films have been boring mindless action flicks. Romeo Must Die and The One come to mind...

Agreed, but this one has been getting excellent reviews, comparing it very favorably with Crouching Tiger.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1131781-hero/

Hmm... Interesting.... Just had a look and it seems "Hero" isn't a Hollywood film at all. It's been out for a few years now according to IMDB. Could be one to go watch. Annoyingly it's in Mandarin.

I have seen this movie on DVD which was readily available a year ago, at least on e-bay. The same goes for Shaolin Soccer which just recently was shown in limited theaters.
The "Hero" is in Mandarin, but with English subtitles which makes the sound genuine. It is a MUCH MUCH better movie than say "The One". On my scale it rivals to "Kiss Of The Dragon".

Ah. No. I was complaining it's in Mandarin because I don't speak or understand Mandarin at all. If it was in Cantonese however then it would have been great

I can't stand watching films which have been dubbed as it is really obvious. Even some of the better attempt at lip synching usually have points where you will be reminded that this wasn't the real language recorded. Subtitles are the only solution which are kind of annoying in that you must pay attention to the bottom of the screen all the time.

Don't forget to take along your.

Ooh, a new Bourne movie? Bourne Identity rocked and I'm a total sucker for Matt Damon. Gee, and Spidey 2 and I Robot. I guess I should actually go to the movies this summer; unlike summers past where all the good movies just blew by me (Matrix 2 and 3, X-Men 2, Hulk, Finding Nemo, Terminator 3, etc, etc). At least I saw Nemo on DVD. I can NEVER miss a Pixar flick.

I've owned "Hero" on DVD for a little over a year, and I've probably watched it about 20 times. It makes "Crouching Tiger" look like a first year film student film, IMO. AMAZING movie, made more interesting by the fact that it's tied into historical facts, in a manner of speaking. HIGHLY recommended!

> Admittedly, I didn't read the Asimov original

It has absolutely nothing to do with them by all accounts, so I am sure it is better that you hadn't. I am glad you liked it, but I am sure that I won't, and not just for the reason of the title.

Why is it people get upset and dislike a movie because it didn't follow the source material? Almost every direct book->movie adaptation is horrible. I'd much rather see them start with an idea off a book, then come up with something more appropriate for the movie. A similar example is the SpiderMan critics who complain the movies had no comic counterparts, but used pieces from them, Well, do you want to go to a movie and see new things, and possibly be suprised? Or walk in knowing the basic story by heart?

The Manchurian Candidate is a novel written in 1959 by Richard Condon. a movie was made in 1962 that was written by George Axelrod.

In my case, I hate movies that didn't follow the source material when and because the script produced is so much worse than the source, the script essentially takes one element from the source and makes a totally different story about it, or, in some particularly egregious cases, actually reverses the theme of the source. Many of them encompass more than one of these reasons. You're right in that in the second case I should just ignore the source and deal with the movie on its own, but the producers have explicitly linked them. It's too bad that the WGA requires certain credits and that studios tend to parlay them.

However, all that said, while I hated (Hated, HATED) Minority Report (for all three of the above reasons), I thought that Spider-Man was passable. I've not seen SM2 yet, but folks tell me that there's even more character development, which is good, since that's mostly what Spider-Man is about.

(On a side note, it's interesting that Kirsten Dunst has suggested that killing off Spider-Man might be a good premise for a movie since the character that her character took the place of in the first movie dies when falling from the bridge. In a rather horrific manner.)