The movie descended into weirdness at times in a way I appreciated while also kind of wasting some of its potential. I only saw it the once in the theater, and I think it’s at least worth seeing once. I remember some of the dialog being kind of annoying and wishing there were less of that and more of the occasional striking imagery.
I also think the movie is better than the book. Not really a fan of Vandermeer from what I’ve read (this whole trilogy and catches of his mushroom noir book).
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Finch is the only vandermeer novel I actually like (if that’s the one you mean when you say mushroom noir)
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I think so, but the excerpt I know came from a big big book which I think was an omnibus of books related to Finch so I can’t be sure.
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the other books set in that setting, City of Saints and Madmen and Shriek: an Afterword are not good in a way that frustrates me to no end (too many ideas and concepts, none of them developed beyond a sketch. This is a flaw I find in my own work so it really sticks out when a much more successful and prolific writer seemingly can’t see it)
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weird fiction
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I usually don’t read sequels because I don’t trust most authors who would write sequels to possess this super human ability to not lose the thread when you’re working at a scale so large, especially without the generic censor that it seems a lot of new weird authors were happy to toss out of their tool kit. The Annihilation books go this way too, and the ending is not impressive. First books are usually the best in my experience, so maybe I ought to check out Finch.
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oh, each of the ambergris books is stand alone and finch was the last one he wrote (and the only good one because it actually had focus)
rare case where he visibly became a better writer from the first to the last book
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oh, that is actually intriguing!
Feel like you might be taking the wrong lesson from this…
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I absolutely am, I just hate reading people whose work looks like the first drafts I delete as unsalvageable
If I don’t like something in my own writing, I doubly dislike it in the works of others
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Sorcerer
One incredibly stressful situation to the next. Some directors let a scene breath, but this one feels like every scene is breathing down your neck, ratcheting up the tension past the breaking point. It’s simply the story of four guys making a delivery and the paths that led them to that point.
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the village was a very different movie than i expected. everyone made it sound like it sucked and had some awful swerve in it but like pretty much every m night movie ive watched its not this out of nowhere thing that completely upraises the plot…its a bunch of knots unraveling. I’ve never heard anyone talk about the most shocking thing in the movie joaquin phoenix getting stabbed but heard plenty of complaining about the end which is telegraphed like the whole movie and IMO was totally fine. it was a good ass twilight zone episode! and it’s really well shot and beautiful too. we did watch a trailer for it from 2004 that was fucking awful and made it look like a movie where people are getting eaten by monsters so i guess i understand why some people were disappointed but it was nice that it was just some sappy shit about love and like analyzing american reactionary behavior (it’s very telling that the village is nothing but a sea of white faces…makes you wonder what the elders are really afraid of!!)
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Yeah!! The Happening is also a good ass twilight zone episode!! People are weird about this shit
i haven’t watched anything he’s made since then, maybe i should do an M Night Night
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Yeah I think a post from @wourme turned me on to this movie and it’s absolutely unrelenting. What a film!
I saw Annihilation once only in the theater and thought the sound design made it worth it. It’s like you’re being enveloped by wall of sound on a giant theater sound system.
I think the meat of the thing is a little too incoherent and the characters aren’t particularly convincing but it was mostly effective horror and works for me as a setting and tone.
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caught Broker in a dubbed screening, but for half the price, beggars ain’t be chosers, watched it earlier today.
Song Kang-Ho and Bae Donna are two stalwarts and have nothing left to prove, hence IU’s performance was quite a surprise, more nuanced than I’d have expected for a starlet turned actor, and I’d like to see her tackle more movies (come to think of it, LJH was good in ‘Decision to Leave’ as well 
… what’s next, Davichi and Taesabiae starring in a crime drama or Courtroom Soap?)
In any case, worth a watch for a movie that wears its heart on its sleeve, yet never feels too much on the nose.
I watched the most recent Dragon Ball movie on a tiny TV I’ve got set up in front of the treadmill (I’m just trying to get a good trot in while watching shit these days, but here I could say Look at me, I’m training like Piccolo, as I watch him. Wow!).
I had low expectations (I found out early on that they bring back Cell, in a really corny and awful way that feels like that movie where they brought back Broly, who immediately turned into some sort of shit monster), but it was fun? Surprisingly so. I even thought the whole full 3D thing would irk me, but once it gets going you kinda don’t notice it.
Love me some Piccolo and Gohan teaming up, and they sure do that here. If I wasn’t so tired from walking I might have even gotten weepy at Gohan using Piccolos big special move to finish off Cell, instead of the ol’ reliable Kamehameha.
the village and the happening would be a great like war on terror misunderstood masterstrokes double feature…both of them cover a lot of the weird repressiveness of the times and peoples fucked up psychology. The way the peopel in the happening blame everything on terrorists constantly even though the news continually says its not terrorists and then all buy potted plants to put in their houses at the end like little american flags after 9/11 is amazing.
also the wikipedia page for the village made me laugh because the see also at the bottom links to plato’s cave
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