Be Excellent To Each Other

How come?

Watched The Big Short last night. I thought it did a tremendous job of explaining a complicated subject in an easy to digest manner, and Steve Carell's performance was outstanding - I've never seen him in a "straight man" role before. Christian Bale was alright I guess, but I was getting some serious Patrick Bateman vibes from his character.

As there is lot of chat between spud / Simon (sickboy) / Mark and Begby, discussing what has happened and flashbacks to the original.

For me, it was, i forgot this, that and other and was nice to remember.

Hardcore Henry is on netflix now. Tried to watch it but had to stop after 20mins. It's like watching someone else play a video game through Bubbles glasses.

It's great, it just keeps on getting more and more totally batshit.

Was he 'Sous-vide'ing or shouting about Google stuff?

I might give it another go.

Read the book of the same title by Michael Lewis. He's a former broker who has been writing very successfully for a couple of decades now. Makes the whole Collatoralized Debt Obligation very understandable and the book reads like a thriller.

Title.

He also wrote Moneyball.

I think you have to sort of let it wash over you.

It is very good, and whoever did the editing is a stone-cold genius..

We wanted something daft to watch on a Friday night. This definitely ticked the box.

John Wick 2. It's John Wick but John Wicker. Also with more illuminati. It's great!

Amusing fan theory I heard:

Bill and Ted and the princesses were travelling the time streams in the phone booth when they were attacked by bad mens. Bill and the princesses were killed, and the phone booth was destroyed. In the process of the booth going kerblammo, the time stream fractured, and we now have a multiverse full of differed Ted Logans, all very sad and very angry that their best friend and girlfriend are dead.

John Wick, John Constantine, Neo, and Jack Travern are all Ted.

Woah

And a cat. And a Tai Chi master. And Johnny Mnemonic. And a bomb disposal expert (Jack Tavern?).

And this guy:



Also, didn't they get married? Or just engaged? I'm struggling to remember the second one, which isn't good.

And also, let's not forget, Keanu fucking Reeves:



dat reload 29 seconds in, tho

Because the Missus wants to see the new Resident Evil film in the cinema, we've been watching all the old ones ( because obviously otherwise we wouldn't be able to make sense of the plot ). I honestly can;t work out if they're great or dreadful, but to be honest I'm not really sure it matters. Zombies! Guns! Backflips! Explosions! Wentworth Miller! People who have been living in a besieged prison for 18 months yet are clean shaven and wear spotless and perfect clothes! Mutant Dogs getting their heads kicked off! They know what they're aiming for and they get it pretty much spot on. If only they scored higher on the Craster scale.

A friend of mine loves them all so I thought I'd give them a try last year. They're so all over the place, I forget how many films there are and in which order they're in. The first one was ok, but the rest are just unmemorable.

There's a small amount of InfoSec Twitter that crosses over into Gun Twitter and the latter is amazed by John Wick. Apparently Reeves's one handed press check when dual-wielding is outlandish.

Totally - you could chop up all the films and stick parts back together at random and the end result would be as coherent as any of the sequels.

Regular action movie stars go through so much weapons training over the course of ten movies that they become pretty proficient at it.

There's a scene from Collateral where Tom Cruise shoots two guys in the street, and his technique is so spot on that they allegedly use it in tactical handgun training.

You could just as easily be describing Fast and Furious here

You got a link for that clip?

Yes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3mkYDTRwgw&t=1m30s

[edit] I wonder if you can put the time in an embedded video.



[edit][edit] Nope.

One of my favourite films. One of my favourite scenes.

Honourable shout out to Val Kilmer in Heat - his tactical reload during the big shootout is perfect.

I've not seen Heat. I should fix that.

Aha:

In 2 he has a very distinctive style for almost all his gun handling that I've never seen before.

I'm always quite intruiged when you get something like that. In the Lethal Weapon TV series Riggs holds his gun in a style I've never seen before, very close into the chest. I assume it's a quirk of whoever they get to train them on how to look authentic.

I haven't seen 2 yet. In 1, there's a strong gun-kata vibe -- pistols used almost as melee weapons, on enemies no more than a few feet away. That seems to come with a slightly weird stance with the gun close to the chest and the elbows stuck out.

I'm not sure if that's an authentic combat thing or a thing that started in movies and graduated to real life gun fans because it looks cool. I think there's a lot of things in the latter bracket, though. Life imitates art.

2 is basically 2 hours of the gun kata scene from Equilibrium. It's great.

Ah, Equilibrium. There was a move with an astounding ratio of very small numbers of very good bits to acres and acres of shite.

I sort-of internet know a guy who's interested in traditional, historical English bare-knuckle boxing. Most films that do it get the technicalities fairly wrong ( e.g. Downey Jr in Sherlock Holmes ) but every now and then they do it correctly - apparently the boxing scene in Jane Austen pic Finding Jane is really pretty good. I like it when films really care about the details like that.

Is it RONNIE PICKERING?

Probably a bit of both. One of the first things you learn when training to use guns in combat (especially close quarters) is that you always point the gun where you're looking.

Holding the gun close to your chest makes this more natural as the arms then follow the body easier, so you just need to work on making sure you don't move your head independently too much.

I expect it helps with recoil management too.

(and looks fucking cool )

Oh man, I'm going to practice this with my airsoft pistol! Pew pew.

Woah woah woah woah WOAH.

What? The? Fuck?

Boll and Ted's Bogus Journey is a masterpiece, and better than the original.

I didn't mean it wasn't a good film, I meant it wasn't good that I haven't seen it in so long.

Jesus man you worried me there.

I don't think it was better than the original, though.

Dead to me.

Grim... Is on the Island of Correct

Yup. Original is best.

God you people are philistines.

I finally got round to properly watching Warrior and cried all the way through but especially at the end because I am a massive cry-baby.

Tom Hardy's back/shoulders though. Dude can train.

Fucking good, innit?

Was very good. Thanks for the recommendation

In John Wick 2



Overall I think the first film is the better of the two, and the nightclub scene from the first is still the best action scene across both films. General quality of action scenes was slightly higher in the second one, but the nightclub scene was the peak for me.

Story stuff was better in the first too, second felt like it slightly overexplained stuff. In the first I was never distracted by asking questions about the mechanics of how the different organisations interact with each other.

I'd also say the first didn't end making me think "this needs a sequel", I was happy to get one, but I wasn't left thinking that things we unresolved. Whereas in the second....

They're both fantastic though. I hope the third (and the speculated "The Continental" TV series") happens.

Also I grew up round the corner from and went to school with The McShanes, and I'm very happy to see Ian doing so well for himself these days.

He was a pretty big deal in Lovejoy.