Thursday, June 24, 2021

Thursday Movie Picks #363: TMP Television Edition - Fish Out of Water



Hello there and welcome to Thursday Movie Picks a weekly series where you share movie picks each Thursday. The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five titles and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

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This week's Thursday Movie Picks is TMP Television Edition - Fish Out of Water

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So this is a fun theme. I'm picking my most recent watches.

The Rook (2019 - )
A woman wakes up in a park surrounded by dead bodies around her. She has no memories of what happened but finds a letter on her person, a letter written by her informing her that her memory has been erased and that she was targeted by an unknown assassin. The assassin could be a colleague from the secret organization within the British Intelligence whom she works for. So her choices are either to walkaway from everything and assume a new identity or use the identity of the person who's memory was erased to find out who is trying to kill her.
So the fish out of water aspect of the story is of the main character pretending to be the person that was erased, navigating this new world like she already knows it, trying doing her job and meeting the people she used to know. I loved the book this was based on and was sooo excited when an adaptation was announced. Unfortunately the TV series was a disappointment as it changed sooo many things. In the book for example, the main character that woke up in the park has a completely different personality from the person that was erased. The person that was erased was an introvert, into organization and afraid of her own power. The person that woke up is more of an extrovert, is witty, more interested in field work and open to exploring her powers and the TV series completely ignores that aspect of the book. Also the plot is completely different from the book...it is I think unnecessarily more convoluted.

Emily in Paris (2020 - )
A young woman moves to Paris to work for a French marketing firm to provide an American perspective on things. Emily doing her "marketing stuff" is not entirely believable...like she doesn't have much skills and experience. She just mostly seems very juvenile, unworldly and basically not like a working adult at all. I would also say some of the office workplace stuff is also unbelievable...I think it was the second day, where she came early and had to wait outside a locked office building. I mean are we not living in the 21st century where offices (especially for the kind of the firm she is working for...it is not some sort of small family business where only the owner has the key to open shop) use key cards, and she would already have been given a card on her first day by HR. Still I thought this was fun light fluff. Just don't take it too seriously and go into it expecting it to be about a poised young woman crushing it at her career.
 
Ted Lasso (2020 - )
American football coach Ted Lasso, moves to the UK to coach a football team. Emily in Paris was heavily criticised for having a silly expat main character who goes to Paris to work without knowing how to speak French or doing much prep for the position she is about to fill. However, the same criticism for some reason doesn't seem to be directed at Ted Lasso as much, even though he too is a silly expat, one who is expected to coach football but doesn't know anything about the sport (he has only coached American football, which is an entirely different sport), nor did he do any prep work into the culture or language...it is his assistant coach who was hired along with him who basically did all the prep work on learning the sport and briefing him on language differences like how a truck is called a lorry and a car trunk is called a car boot in the UK. But Lasso is this nice and very optimistic character and some of the other characters are just as likeable so the show turned out to be quite funny and I did enjoy watching it. I guess what I just don't understand is the love the show seems to be receiving...because the show is not great great.

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Thursday, June 17, 2021

Thursday Movie Picks #362: Natural Disaster



Hello there and welcome to Thursday Movie Picks a weekly series where you share your movie picks each Thursday. The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

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This week's Thursday Movie Picks is Natural Disaster

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Quick post today, so I'm just going with recent watches.

Crawl (2019)
During a hurricane, a young woman and her father are trapped when rising flood waters brings in alligators into the lower levels of their house. Natural disaster movie and animals run wild all rolled into one...surprisingly I found this pretty decent. The alligators were scary just being their natural stealthy predator self.
 
Only the Brave (2017)
Based on a true story about elite firefighters battling a wildfire. Straight forward based on a true story kinda movie...rather conventional. Still I like it. Wildfires are scary and it was fascinating to see what firefighters do to control them.
 
Twister (1996)
Storm chasers on the brink of divorce tries to insert a measuring device into the storm to advance future weather warning system. I found it a little boring. Didn't really care for the whole storm chasing thing nor the personal drama between the two leads.
 
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Thursday, June 10, 2021

Thursday Movie Picks #361: Worst Book to Movie Adaptations



Hello there and welcome to Thursday Movie Picks a weekly series where you share your movie picks each Thursday. The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

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This week's Thursday Movie Picks is Worst Book to Movie Adaptations [Suggested by ThePunkTheory]

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Today's theme is a suggestion from ThePunkTheory. There are quite a number of movies that are based on books that are bad but I'm making this more challenging and only picking movies adapted from books I've read, so my choices are a little limited.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
A man stays ageless as a portrait of him grows older and uglier. I love the book and really really dislike this adaptation. The actor playing Dorian Gray was terrible; he was so wooden and expressionless. I also thought Angela Lansbury way miscast as Sibyl Vane. Even in her youth, Lansbury has a sort of maturity and old soul look to her which did not really fit Vane whom I thought was suppose to be really young, sweet and naive.
 
The Lovely Bones (2009)
A murdered young girl watches the people she leaves behind from an afterlife. I had read this book around the time it was first published. It had been hugely popular and I had liked the book too so I was really looking forward to the movie. Well what a disappointment. If I'm remembering correctly, the story in the book is told from the perspective of dead girl while she is in some kind of heaven...now that there is going to be difficult to adapt...heaven had the potential to be real cheesy on screen. Anyway I don't think the movie did "heaven" too well. I thought it would have been better if they took out all the scenes that showed the girl in heaven from the movie and just let her do the voice over narration of her flash backs and observations on the current state of her family.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013)
When her mother disappears, a teenage girl learns that she is descended from warriors who protect the world from demons. I read the book before seeing the movie. Not a fan at all. The movie was not any better. And Jamie Campbell Bower being miscast as Jace didn't help; he had looked a little too gaunt for the role.
 
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Thursday, June 3, 2021

Thursday Movie Picks #360: Oscar Winners Edition: Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay


Hello there and welcome to Thursday Movie Picks a weekly series where you share your movie picks each Thursday. The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

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This week's Thursday Movie Picks is Oscar Winners Edition: Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay 

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 Here are my favourites:

 

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Dead Poets Society (1989)
Childhood favourite. It's about a group of people meeting to talk about literary stuff of course I liked it.
 
Gosford Park (2001)
I think I saw this the first time when it was released on DVD and thought it was the most boring thing ever; like what were these dull old timey people doing. I guess I had been too young to pay any attention to it. A few years later I decided to give it another try and loved it. It's this sharp and often darkly funny upstairs downstairs drama and murder mystery that takes place in a manor house. Also it has a great ensemble cast.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
It's has this super weird but unique premise that I thought I wouldn't like but I did. It's this great funny, quirky, quite sci-fi-ish and emotional movie about a man trying to forget an ex-girlfriend and then later trying desperately to hold on to his memories of her.

 

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
 
A Man for All Seasons (1966)
I like dialogue heavy movies and this having been adapted from a play is just that as it follows Thomas More trying to navigate the political minefield of sticking by his principles without offending the king and losing his head.
 
The Departed (2006) 
I've said this before, mob movies bore me but this tension filled adaptation of a Hong Kong film was interesting and thrilling to watch.

The Social Network (2010)
Adapted from a book about the founding of Facebook, this was adapted by Sorkin so of course it was sharply written and had entertaining verbal sparrings. 

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