Well its the Swan Princess. WHo cares?
(not sure why its so heavily requested either…)
Well its the Swan Princess. WHo cares?
(not sure why its so heavily requested either…)
I still watch them and I still enjoy them for the most part, but I do believe there's been a marked decline in traffic both here and on the site. And I think a lot of people will agree that Doug and the site have both passed their prime.
Nostalgia Critic and the site were great for a while, but things have gone downhill a bit over the last year or so, what with Doug's failed attempt at Demo Reel and then him keeping Malcolm and Rachel (now Tamara) around for the revived NC, even though they're only occasionally funny and don't really add much. And, in general, the new episode just feel kind of overproduced.
And then of course there was Spoony leaving (as well as a few others), and a lot of the producers just aren't contributing as much as they used to. Also, it's been forever since they hired any new talent.
So yeah, while I still enjoy the NC, it's easy to see why people aren't as interested as they used to be.
By the way are they still more, lets say, in a better situation than the AVGN?
I personally feel his videos are currently very strong, there was a bumpy period when he transition from Demo Reel back to NC trying to balance the old show with some more sketch-based humour but I think they've gotten that balance down.
But hype disillusionment and nostalgia glasses comes with a change in style.
I really want Doug to do Princess Diaries 2 some day. After he talked about how shitty it was during Disneycember, he whetted my appetite, making me want to see him tear it apart.
By the way are they still more, lets say, in a better situation than the AVGN?
Not sure exactly what you mean. Honestly, I don't really follow James that closely, but I do know that he still puts out an AVGN episode every few months and his lack of output recently is due to him still working on the AVGN movie.
@Rob:
…what gives you that impression? his reviews get talked about... every two weeks when he does them.
It looked like that his reviews weren't nearly as discussed here as his vlogs and other videos . Hell his Food Fight review was barely discussed here so i thought that maybe people here didn't like his reviews.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
I still watch them and I still enjoy them for the most part, but I do believe there's been a marked decline in traffic both here and on the site. And I think a lot of people will agree that Doug and the site have both passed their prime.
Nostalgia Critic and the site were great for a while, but things have gone downhill a bit over the last year or so, what with Doug's failed attempt at Demo Reel and then him keeping Malcolm and Rachel (now Tamara) around for the revived NC, even though they're only occasionally funny and don't really add much. And, in general, the new episode just feel kind of overproduced.
And then of course there was Spoony leaving (as well as a few others), and a lot of the producers just aren't contributing as much as they used to. Also, it's been forever since they hired any new talent.
So yeah, while I still enjoy the NC, it's easy to see why people aren't as interested as they used to be.
But, since no one posted it, The NC reviewed The Swan Princess this week.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
Except this week apparently.
I have only started watching his videos recently and so far all of his videos have been really enjoyable for me . I have watched some of his old reviews and they seemed on par with his new reviews .
The Best Friends play 187 RIDE OR DIE.
NSFW
!
I can't believe people got paid to make this game.
This week's editorial is What you never knew about Who Framed Rober Rabbit.
It's strange, I just watched this movie in its entirety for the first time today, right before I found out about Bob Hoskins' death.
Todd reviews a song called….."#selfie" (???) by the Chainsmokers.
http://blip.tv/todds-pop-song-reviews/selfie-by-the-chainsmokers-a-pop-song-review-6863640
Oh god another song with the stupid trend of putting a hashtag in the title….?
Selfie isn't a song. Its not music.
Doug does the Lorax. He's pretty upset in this one, as he tends to be on the Suess adaptations.
http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic/43234-the-lorax
Also, apparently channel awesome is looking for new talent. Not surprising considering most of their content makers are drying up and producing less.
They fired Mike Dodd 2 weeks ago and didn't tell him…..
Is it just me, or was the moral for the Lorax review exactly the same as the Last Airbender's?
Paw feels the love tonight with Music Movies tackling The Lion King.
http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/teamt/paw/music-movies/43284-the-lion-king
I woulda picked Morning Report as worst easily, but I guess always going for the add-on song is a bit of a cheat.
Also love his delivery when he sees what he's doing next time.
Damn it makes me wanna watch Lion King again. And not as background noise, but to REALLY watch it. It's been years since the last time.
Is it just me, or was the moral for the Lorax review exactly the same as the Last Airbender's?
Airbender's moral was the crap doesn't disturb the original. Lorax's moral was you need crap to remind you the original exists. And in both cases, that the bad will fade with time while the good endures.
Very similar, but slightly different.
…now I wanna watch his Airbender review again.
In the spirit of Mother's Day, Cinema Snob takes a look at Mommie Dearest:
http://blip.tv/the-cinema-snob/mommie-dearest-by-the-cinema-snob-6874796
I woulda picked Morning Report as worst easily, but I guess always going for the add-on song is a bit of a cheat.
Wait, he didn't pick Morning Report for worst? That's weird, cause I thought he picked Human Again for worst from Beauty and the Beast. Or, I dunno, maybe he didn't. I'll have to rewatch that review.
Wait, he didn't pick Morning Report for worst? That's weird, cause I thought he picked Human Again for worst from Beauty and the Beast. Or, I dunno, maybe he didn't. I'll have to rewatch that review.
He picked Be Prepared as worst. For being too chipper or something.
Even though the annoying add on song that was inserted a decade later that hurt's Mufassa's credibiltiy and ruins a background joke should have been the easy choice. (But yes, he did pick Human Again as worst… on B&B he liked all the other songs.)
How the fuck did an emotionless robot man get chosen to be the MUSICAL guy.
I always want to watch his show, but he's like the absolute worst choice to do his own show.
How can you possibly hate "Be Prepared"? That is like the best song!
How can you possibly hate "Be Prepared"? That is like the best song!
I don't know. I watched the video and I still couldn't tell you.
He loves the Jeremy Irons and the visuals but the… uhm... something?
@Monkey:
How the fuck did an emotionless robot man get chosen to be the MUSICAL guy.
I always want to watch his show, but he's like the absolute worst choice to do his own show.
He added that to his stuff later. He just did video game stuff originally… he didn't get onto the site for covering musicals.
He mostly focused on video game music and point-and-click Let's Plays. I love the idea of Music Movies, but man, do I disagree with him on a lot of shit.
Aaand people didn't believe me when I said Doug would take another great episode and not like it, but keep talking for half an hour about some little minor detail in another filler episode.
Truly, a weird entity he is.
Aaand people didn't believe ME when I said Aru would harp over the exact same thing he keeps harping over!
Seriously. The episode was okay. My take was the same as Doug's. It was largely exactly what you expected, aside from the Cheers theme moment, and the apocalypse left to the imagination was a bit better. His two co-hosts also agreed and… that ep was what it was. (And similarly Finn the Human WAS a weak episode, while Jake the Dog fixed it some... which is exactly what he said when he got to that episode.)
If you dislike his reviews so much and so regularly, you should probably stop watching them.
I don't know. I originally wrote Adventure Time off after watching the first season and finding it some-what fun, but largely boring. I randomly caught Simon and Marcy one day and loved it. It made me go back through the series, and while I am still largely ambivalent on it (love half the episodes, find the other half rather boring–it's quite literally a fifty-fifty split at this point) Simon and Marcy remains my favorite of the entire series. There's probably almost certainly definitely bias in that, but even watching it removed from the series I saw it as a fantastic piece of television that hit all the right notes perfectly. I don't know how anyone could just call it "okay."
@Nex:
stuff
Had a whole thing, moved it to the AT thread.
http://forums.arlongpark.net/showthread.php?t=21107&page=70&p=3226684&viewfull=1#post3226684
@Nex:
I don't know. I originally wrote Adventure Time off after watching the first season and finding it some-what fun, but largely boring. I randomly caught Simon and Marcy one day and loved it. It made me go back through the series, and while I am still largely ambivalent on it (love half the episodes, find the other half rather boring–it's quite literally a fifty-fifty split at this point) Simon and Marcy remains my favorite of the entire series. There's probably almost certainly definitely bias in that, but even watching it removed from the series I saw it as a fantastic piece of television that hit all the right notes perfectly. I don't know how anyone could just call it "okay."
I'm with you. I kind of only watch the big heavily advertise episodes. The landmark episodes. But Adventure Time is always enjoyable to watch but its never a "I can't miss episode" type of show.
Nostalgia Critic does an Old vs New with the Spider-Man films.
http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic/43400-old-vs-new-spider-man
Really surprised this was done, because they do both franchises, including spoiling all plot points in the Amazing Spider-Man 2.
! The action debate was odd in that the fact that CGI has grown leaps and bounds in the last 12 years, heck even in the last 3-5 years between Spider Man 3 and the Amazing Spider Man, was never mentioned.
! And I loved how the Rhino was used in Amazing Spider-Man 2. That opening scene was one of my favorite scenes in that film, and I liked the book end with him even if the ending itself was a rushed mess.
! But I gotta agree with pretty much all the debates and how they ended up in the review.
Well they said right at the top it was going to include spoilers…
The action debate was odd in that the fact that CGI has grown leaps and bounds in the last 12 years, heck even in the last 3-5 years between Spider Man 3 and the Amazing Spider Man, was never mentioned.
Well, it's old versus new. That's inherent in the debate.
It was a factor in animated LotR versus movie LotR… and in old King Kong vs. New King Kong, and the new one clearly won that particular field with a 60 year advantage and there they even joked about how it wasn't even a contest and a forgone conclusion... in that particular area.
The newer movies are generally going to have an effects advantage, but a lot of times the writing/directing/editing/acting/characters of an older version can still make the old film the better one.
And even then, access to better effects in an action sequence doesn't immediately make it better... the staging and ideas and overall execution are important too.
Yeah I ultimately agreed with the uses of slow-mo was odd in the original, but just thought it's odd how the fact that cgi has gotten better in recent years wasn't explicit.
And even with the spoiler warning, the movie came out like two-three weeks ago. Wondering was compelled this topic now instead of later on down the line. Realize getting pigeon holed in certain topics is narrowing and he might have gotten inspired because of the movie, but just find it odd he went straight for a current film in theatres. At the very least, I thought it would just go Spider-Man 1 vs the Amazing Spider-Man 1.
Anyone who thinks ASM (especially the second one) is better than Spider-Man doesn't get what makes a movie good or bad.
Doug's criteria was just skewed. I think story should be worth three points at least. I don't care how likable he found Peter and Gwen, dedicating like 70% of your movie to stupid romance cliches and trite dialogue kills any sort of merits that movie might have.
Also he was harsh on the Spider-man villains compared to the ASM ones. Like both Lizard and Harry Goblin sucked as villains because of how poorly written they were. The original ones like Green Goblin and Doc Ock had their corny moments but they were much more well-written and memorable which he kinda addressed but he seemed to underplay their depth as characters just because of their goofy moments. I know William Dafoe's goblin was far superior to whatshisname's rushed angsty hipster goblin.
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Also I hated the action in ASM 2, like Doug was going on how the original forced a bunch of slo-mo for no reason that made it look like crap...was he watching the same movie I was because ASM2 was responsible for far worse. yeah, let's slow down Gwen's fall to as much as humanly possible, really milk it out because it makes it so dramatic, blegh.
I hated all three Raimi movies. And at least liked elements of the new ones, particularly the Peter/Gwen chemistry.
So there is that.
Toby Macguire was the very worst casting choice they could've possibly gone with for the role.
The only real bright side to the Raimi films were doc ock and that Bruce Campbell were in 'em
The only real bright side to the Raimi films were doc ock and that Bruce Campbell were in 'em
And Macho Man Randy Savage.
@TLC:
Doug's criteria was just skewed. I think story should be worth three points at least. I don't care how likable he found Peter and Gwen, dedicating like 70% of your movie to stupid romance cliches and trite dialogue kills any sort of merits that movie might have.
Also he was harsh on the Spider-man villains compared to the ASM ones. Like both Lizard and Harry Goblin sucked as villains because of how poorly written they were. The original ones like Green Goblin and Doc Ock had their corny moments but they were much more well-written and memorable which he kinda addressed but he seemed to underplay their depth as characters just because of their goofy moments. I know William Dafoe's goblin was far superior to whatshisname's rushed angsty hipster goblin.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
Also I hated the action in ASM 2, like Doug was going on how the original forced a bunch of slo-mo for no reason that made it look like crap...was he watching the same movie I was because ASM2 was responsible for far worse. yeah, let's slow down Gwen's fall to as much as humanly possible, really milk it out because it makes it so dramatic, blegh.
Dafoe's Green Goblin fucking sucked in the original Spiderman movie. Like HARD.
Agreen on Doc Oc.
Dafoe's Goblin was hammy and looked incredibly awful. You had entire lengthy scenes of two guys in full face masks talking and not emoting, it was bad.
Dock Ock has the infinite advantage of being the spider villain easiest to convey on-screen as… just a guy without a doofy costume and some mechanical shit coming out of him. He's not hard to make look good.
I wonder why they never went with this design for the green goblin, it's really good and beats the crappy design of the first movie by a longshot
probably to scary for the kids or something like that
That design is pretty doofy too actually. Not as bad as the power rangers costume by a logn shot, but pretty doofy.
Though if you shrank down the ears and let his real eyes show through, maybe a slightly darker shade of green, and I guess readjusted the hook into a cloak, it'd probably be just fine. Like Red Skull or something. (I think mostly its the hood working against it)
Also, rather than making an animatronic mask, they coulda just gone with makeup and played it off as a mask.
I dunno. I can see why they tried it first and decided it wouldn't work… but how they THEN thought the later costume was better just boggles everyone's minds.
I guess they may have thought that one looked more like a Halloween costume while the one in the movies looked more….armor-y or something someone would wear a.k.a. "realistic"? :wassat:
I assume that was the train of thoguht but, really guys, its a comic book movie. Go for what looks good over practical. It's fine.
You know, all his other Old VS New videos seem to have had story and pacing as the tiebreaker at the end… I suppose the fact that this one had that right at the start, with Raimi winning, should have been a clear tip-off that he was gonna declare Marc Webb's movies superior. Because if Raimi was gonna win the whole thing, he'd probably have kept that particular category to the end.
Personally though, speaking as someone who never saw SM3 all the way through and only kinda remembers 1... I'd still probably have said the Raimi trilogy wins. Because TASM1 always felt like the script still needed some more polish before getting released, and TASM2... Yeah TASM2 was just a complete mess. I don't care how emotional that one moment was, that does not make up for the massive clusterfuck that was the rest of the movie. And even that one brilliant emotional scene was kinda ruined by just being tacked on in the last ten minutes of the film. I am firmly of the opinion that the last 10-15 minutes of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 could have been their own movie and it would have been infinitely better off for it.
@Vegard:
as someone who never saw SM3 all the way through and only kinda remembers 1.
This being the case, your opinion is invalid.
On basically every level.
@TLC:
I don't care how likable he found Peter and Gwen, dedicating like 70% of your movie to stupid romance cliches and trite dialogue kills any sort of merits that movie might have.
1)Raimi's films did the exact same thing. Except there the romance was awful. Both versions had meh dialogue.
2)One of the major notes of spiderman IS the romance side… and the bad luck he has with juggling his responsibilites with the women in his life. Has been from the start, and it SHOULD be a major component of the movies.
(Much more so than the "geeky parker" bit that the comics stopped doing pretty early on, honestly.)
@Vegard:
I'd still probably have said the Raimi trilogy wins.
…ehh....ONLY if TASM3 has Garfield spend 2/3 of it moping around and then being sudden a dick for the last 1/3, has a few dance numbers of him prancing through the street and giving the finger to the audience, have Venom show up for about the last 5 minutes and then unceremoniously killed off-screen...and so on.
For me, it's the sheer existence of Raimi's 3rd movie that gives TASM the upper hand so far in spite of its obvious...obvious flaws.
As overcrowded as Amazing2 is… its nowhere near the clusterfuck of wrong sensibilities that Raimi3 was. Which was, you know, so bad they had to fire everyone, delay the next film for years and reboot the franchise to wash the stink out.
It wasn't Batman and Robin bad, but... it was pretty bad.
3 was every bit the overcrowded mess the latest movie was in terms of too much stuff going on, PLUS all of the overcrowding was incredibly stupid crap. It's been winnowed down to the dancing sequence to highlight just how awful it was, the same way that nuke the fridge or batnipples are shorthands for other disasters... but there was a LOT wrong with it. A LOT. From a scene with Bruce Campbell somehow taking far too long and being annoying as a snooty waiter, to the convenient Butler, to everything involving Eddie Brock and Venom, to twonking the Uncle Ben's death story, to Peter just letting Sandman go in the end with no consequences whatsoever, to Peter smacking Mary Jane around, to repeating all the same notes the first two movies went through, Harry's convenient amnesia, and the awful handling of Gwen Stacy (great actress for the part though)...
As for part 1, I'm pretty much on record for not liking that for a lot of reasons, starting with the costumes and going along to the citizens being way too supportive of Spidey out the gate due to it coming out right after 9/11 to mostly not liking Toby MCGuire. The campiness is just way too high and it has not aged well at all compared to other superhero movies. The upside down kiss in the rain was pretty good and iconic though.
Spidey 2 was pretty decent watch in the theater, until you think about the plot even a little bit anyway and then it falls completely apart aside from the train sequence and relies entirely on justifying everything with "Well, he's insane, so the plot doesn't have to make sense!" (Such as when he's told to get SPiderman and then tries to kill Peter Parker without knowing they're the same... or when anyone thought making a miniature SUN in the middle of a city was a good idea...)
And all that sucks because I'm a huge Sam Raimi fan. I like his campy goofy style, I grew up on Hercules and Xena and Evil Dead and Jack of All Trades, but... it was just... bleh.
This being the case, your opinion is invalid.
On basically every level.
…Yeah okay. So to say the one thing I can say and feel justified in; Spider-Man 2 > Both films in the reboot. And I kinda want to see Spider-Man 3 in its entirety to see if it really is as bad as people say it is. Because really to me the idea of it being even more of a clusterfudge than TASM2 seems… kind of unthinkable. Like, people say it is but to me the very idea just does not compute.
…ehh....ONLY if TASM3 has Garfield spend 2/3 of it moping around and then being sudden a dick for the last 1/3, has a few dance numbers of him prancing through the street and giving the finger to the audience, have Venom show up for about the last 5 minutes and then unceremoniously killed off-screen...and so on.
On the Venom-thing at least… that's basically the Goblin in TASM2 though. I mean aside from the "unceremoniously killed off" part, which I guess makes it better as it at least leaves the door open for him to be a major antagonist later.
@Monkey:
Dafoe's Green Goblin fucking sucked in the original Spiderman movie. Like HARD.
Agreen on Doc Oc.
Oh I didn't say he was good but have you seen the AMSM2 goblin? He';s just whiny hipster douchebag. At least the original got the feel of the character right albeit the execution sucked.
1)Raimi's films did the exact same thing. Except there the romance was awful. Both versions had meh dialogue.
2)One of the major notes of spiderman IS the romance side… and the bad luck he has with juggling his responsibilites with the women in his life. Has been from the start, and it SHOULD be a major component of the movies.(Much more so than the "geeky parker" bit that the comics stopped doing pretty early on, honestly.)
Spider-man should be about juggling his entire personal life with his super power job not just the romance. That includes his highschool life, his work (which they completely bypassed in the ASM films), struggling to meet ends. In that respect, SM2 was the best at showing that. Just fixating on that one aspect is not good, it's not really showing us his struggle to balance them as much as wasting our time really. Like they didn't even waste so much time on it to develop Peter's character, it was just as a lazy way to try and make us care about Gwen when she died and nothing else. As far as my opinion goes, both romances sucked but at least the original didn't waste so much goddamn time on them. Yeah, Gwen is much better than Mary Jane but the dialogue she had to work with was about as awful and the scenes were way more dragged out to boot.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
And I'm just going to say this, AMS2 was far forse to me than SM3. SM3 was NOT a good movie by any stretch of the imagination but it at least felt like a movie and not just a vehicle for a franchise so that Sony could try and compete with Marvel. They have the same problems but I can think of more things I liked in SM3. The villains were more memorable and their development felt more progressed (yes Eddy fucking sucked, but Goblin and Sand Man were more sympathetic, that's 2 for 3 compared to ASM's 0 for 3), J. Jonah Jameson which doesn't need mentionining, I liked some of the action scenes more compared to ASM2's awful speed ramping. It's been a while since I watched SM3 but I do not remember it pissing me off nearly as much as ASM2 did.
@TLC:
As far as my opinion goes, both romances sucked but at least the original didn't waste so much goddamn time on them.
The originals spend a ton of time on the romance. A great huge ammount of screentime, a whole mess of scenes, it was a major repetitivre focus in all of them, of them running through the exact same motions.
That mostly boils down to Mary Jane going "I can't be with you" "I'm dating this other guy" and "I've been kidnapped again" but Peter/MJ relationship was a massive, massive ammount of time in those films and she was a boring ass non-evolving character piece of eye candy that contributed nothing.
I'm not going to pull out a stopwatch, (Figure out what actual percentage of screen time per film was dedicated to romance is stupid work, no one is going to do that.) but its a huge chunk of time spent on wangsting and Peter crying. (Add in the angsting with Harry about Mary Jane, or her marrying the pilot, or having a terrible broadway show, or Aunt May talking about Mary Jane, or Peter trying to propose to her in a resteraunt while Bruce Cambell hams it up…)
I'm sure it comes out largely the same for way less payoff and certainly way less chemistry.
@TLC:
Like they didn't even waste so much time on it to develop Peter's character, it was just as a lazy way to try and make us care about Gwen when she died and nothing else.
Or maybe they "wasted" time developing Gwen… to develop Gwen's character? You know, get the audience to like her? Emotionally attached to the character and those close to them?
Isn't that the point of any story?
Peter gets the aftermath sure, but she was her own character along the way too that was fun and interesting to watch ing her own right.
I dunno. I guess they wasted all that time on Uncle Ben and Aunt May and Harry Osborn too, they were just there to develop Peter.
The romance is ASM2 is by far the best spiderman romance out there so far.
The originals spend a ton of time on the romance. A great huge ammount of screentime, a whole mess of scenes, it was a major repetitivre focus in all of them, of them running through the exact same motions.
That mostly boils down to Mary Jane going "I can't be with you" "I'm dating this other guy" and "I've been kidnapped again" but Peter/MJ relationship was a massive, massive ammount of time in those films and she was a boring ass non-evolving character piece of eye candy that contributed nothing.
I'm not going to pull out a stopwatch, (Figure out what actual percentage of screen time per film was dedicated to romance is stupid work, no one is going to do that.) but its a huge chunk of time spent on wangsting and Peter crying. (Add in the angsting with Harry about Mary Jane, or her marrying the pilot, or having a terrible broadway show, or Aunt May talking about Mary Jane, or Peter trying to propose to her in a resteraunt while Bruce Cambell hams it up…)
I'm sure it comes out largely the same for way less payoff and certainly way less chemistry.
It has been a while since I last saw the originals but I don't remember the romance being nearly as obnoxious or annoying. I remember them being better spaced out and more stuff happening. ASM2 was just a romantic comedy with a Spider-man film happening in the background.
Or maybe they "wasted" time developing Gwen… to develop Gwen's character? You know, get the audience to like her? Emotionally attached to the character and those close to them?
Isn't that the point of any story?
Peter gets the aftermath sure, but she was her own character along the way too that was fun and interesting to watch ing her own right.
I dunno. I guess they wasted all that time on Uncle Ben and Aunt May and Harry Osborn too, they were just there to develop Peter.
Maybe it was just the awful dialogue and bad writing but the whole Gwen thing felt less like character development and more like "She's gonna die, she's so gonna die guys, care about her because she's gonna die!" right down to the cheesy graduation speech that they made us suffer through twice.
Whatever they were going for, I doubt their intent was for me to cheer when she finally died.
Also lol at Harry Osborn "development".
"Hey, Peter, I'm your best friend from ten years ago. We're friends now."
"Gah, now I'm dying. I hate you!"
"You're Spider-man, I will kill you!"
At least James Franco's Harry had three movies worth of development even if it was botched at the end.