Be Excellent To Each Other

You might want to check your cinema times for next week. I'm having to do Black Panther this afternoon, as when IW is out tomorrow, they are stopping BP, today is the last day.

Cinema visit is unlikely. I was hoping I could rent it on Amazon or google, but it's not out until the 15th. Bah!

Avengers. Really enjoyed that, especially watching Grim... Brolin's turn as Thanos. Nice job. Enough humour and some consequential fighting, not easy to pull off when aiming for big stakes.

Dammit, I was all alone in the cinema again until a fat lady arrived and sat behind me.

Hi fat lady, in case you are reading over my shoulder!

Ahem: https://www.beexcellenttoeachother.com/ ... =3&t=10747

How will you know the movies over unless she's there to sing?

Black Panther was another ok movie, i'm two for two on being thoroughly meh.

Well wouldn't you know it, 1 day before I'm seeing the Avengers, Black Panther becomes available for ("rent" - Ed)

What the piss, it was fantastic.

I agree, although I thought it a little odd that a film about Black Panther had so little Black Panther in it - the in-costume character, as well as T'Challa himself, almost seemed like a secondary character in his own movie.

I'll take that in return for An Antagonist Who's Ideas, Motivations, And Decisions Make Sense And Are Emotionally Engaging. Which is a fucking revelation in a Marvel film (although I have a soft spot for what they did in Civil War.)

Plus Andy Serkis leaving chew marks on every scrap of scenery.

I liked Michael Jordan, I liked Andy Serkis, I liked Black Panther's sidekick woman. I thought that Black Panther himself was crap and really dragged the film down.

T’Challa at his best:

Is that the guy from Kenan & Kel?

Kenan Thompson, that's the guy.

Yes. Black Jeopardy is a recurring skit on SNL.

That's true. Definitely the best Marvel villain up until Thanos.

Who is it here who likes David Hyde Pierce? Everyone, obviously, but I’m sure someone thinks he’s the bees knees, or maybe just really likes Niles in Frasier. Kern, maybe? Mali? Anyway, someone just recommended me this film.

It’s not on the two services I have, so I’ve not seen it, but might be worth looking at.

It's like the Amazon recommendation engine gone a little bit crazy. "Someone must like this specific thing. It might be you! So you should buy this other thing! It might be terrible. I have no idea! Buy it."

However they can't possibly be wrong there

Might have to take a look at this.

It's amazing whenever I re-watch 'Frasier' how much David Hyde Pierce puts into his performance. There's so many little things such as side-glances or timing that really add to the character and the comedy, yet past unnoticed on first or second viewing.

Me, do you mean? I just thought somebody liked the actor and so might like a film he was in. And yay, it WAS Kern. I did me some remembering.

Interesting video about spoilers.

can you sum it up, so i don't have t watch it?

Bruce Willis is dead right from the start.

If that's true, then why do his feet get cut up so bad when they shoot the glass?

the actor is dead?

I reject that conclusion.

The study was based on averaging user scores. Are we to believe that the average is meaningfully representative of all viewers?

People are generally passive viewers. They like TV shows with no real consequences or complex themes, they need plot summaries at the start of each episode because they didn't pay attention last time around, and enjoy reality TV where it tells you what you're about to see, shows you something, then tells you what you just saw.

Obviously that's fine, if people just view stories as light entertainment for when they want to switch off, that's perfectly reasonable. But averaging their opinions with those of more the more engaged members of the audience is meaningless.

Pretty much

To expand on that, my wife is fine with spoilers, to the extent that she often watches the end of a film before watching it from the start, however, I hate knowing plot twists and spoilers before hand. I think the last major one that I knew about before hand was from The Force Awakens and it really annoyed me. I'd have loved to have gone in not knowing that. The impact would have been much more severe...

So imaging that everyone likes spoilers is like imaging everyone likes Justin Bieber , One Direction or Coldplay or something, just because they top the charts.

You've explained to her that this is fucking mental though, right?

I really don't understand it at all, but she wants to know if the main characters make it through the film or not.

I can see that some people are OK with it and some even like/want/need it, that needing to know exactly what happens straight away... but I'm not. I wouldn't get all hissy over spoilers but I don't appreciate it, personally, as it reduces the impact to me. It's why i tend to avoid a lot of reviews and trailers nowadays.



Ugh, I really dislike that aspect of how shows are presented now. Especially when they are completely out of context and used as a hook.

Yeah, there are a few shows that I think might be otherwise watchable, but I can't handle because of that format.

Also - work presentations. It's possible to do the intro/summary quickly, and for it just to be structure with a bit of reinforcement. But fundamentally it seems to work more as a 'we know half of you are stupid and some aren't listening, so we'll make this easy for you.' Though people still miss the points, so why not aim at the ones who are paying attention and have some sanction for the others.

Though who knows, I haven't worked for 7 months now, maybe it's all nirvana.

Anyway - films. I went to see Goodbye Christopher Robin, which was lovely. Or bittersweet lovely, really, as it's about the effect of being 'the real life Christopher Robin' on CR Milne. It skates over some complex subjects - as well as the above, there's absentee parenting and post war traumatic stress - but I thought there was just enough there to hold it together. Much more 'based on a true story' than an actually true one.

Re: spoilers, I hate them with a passion, but I also understand people who like them. I’ve watched several films where my enjoyment has been tempered by me for some reason being convinced that the movie was about to go darker and kill the main characters. To the point where I’ve stopped enjoying them almost because I get trapped in a perpetual loop of being anxious about it.

So I can get wanting to avoid that.

I quite like spoilers, because I like going "aha" at the clever foreshadowing, but am unfortunately too thick to work out the twist on my own, and too lazy to rewatch things.

If you don't like spoilers then fine, but I hate Spoiler Nazis with a passion.

"I'm going on a two week holiday on the date *movie* releases, so please don't talk about *movie* at all, until I say you can"

No, fuck off. You've got a week from when the movie releases in the cinema. That's your lot. It's up to you to take action to insulate from spoilers at that point.

1 week from cinema release date for movies.
3 days from first UK air for TV shows.
1 month from release date for games and books.

Nonsense, you can just not share spoilers, it's not like people can not hear/see them. What possible reason is there for you to want to spoil movies and such for people?

The problem is that "spoiler" isn't as cut and dried as it seems.

For me, you could have told me Infinity Wars ending before I walked in the cinema, and I wouldn't have counted it as a spoiler, as I knew pretty much what was going to happen in the last 10 minutes of that film since it was announced. Someone who hasn't read any comics and expected the typical Marvel ending, on the other hand would count it as a spoiler.

Essentially, if you argue that you should never discuss spoilers means you cannot ever discuss any media. There has to be a cutoff, and mine are a bit harsh, but if you actually give a shit about the movie/TV show...

Well you can pretty easily infer by context. If you're posting on a forum, use a spoiler tag. If you're posting on social media, use a similar technique for masking the spoiler. If you're talking to someone in person, before you spoil something, ask "do you mind if I spoil X".

Not doing this is being a dick. Doing this allows you to discuss whatever you want, without needless ruining things for other people.

Flagging up a spoiler and giving people reasonable ability to avoid it is just courteous. Not doing so selfish, and serves no actual benefit.

To my mind, if the characters in the film didn't know it was going to happen, it's a spoiler.

I think it's just any major plot point that everyone doesn't already know. e.g. mentioning that there's a shark in Jaws wouldn't really be a spoiler just because the chief didn't know at the start.

But then if you say something like “oh I love the twist” then you spend your whole time anxiously waiting for the twist.

“Was that it, or was that just plot development?” For me, almost any kind of knowledge beforehand ruins it.

In a similar vein, it bugs me went a film starts out with a scene near from later in the story to then jump back again; I don't need a teaser for a film I'd already committed to watch. The last two films I watched did this with differing results -

The Next Three Days. The scene is a good one, but in the context of the main story, doesn't need repeating.
Swordfish - With the opening scene at the bank being pretty good and the rest of the film being a mess, I was just waiting for the bank scene to come around to see if it would improve the film (it didn't)

Hmmm, not sure I agree with that as then you’re including a lot of the uses of dramatic irony, which are purposefully made plain to the audience before the characters’ knowledge.

I don’t like spoilers, in general. I think some films can give you almost a little burst of adrenaline at the thrill of a clever twist. Take an obvious one where the whole perception of the characters changes after you get the ‘twist’. You can watch a film like that twice, wth and without the knowledge after the twist and it’s a different film. Different things make sense in different ways. If you go in with the knowledge before hand you’ve lost the chance to see it through that first set of conditions.

That said, spoilers for things that don’t really have a ‘twist’ don’t help me in tense moments. It’s a running joke here in my house that I refused to watch the second half of Finding Nemo because I got REALLY upset when the fish got lost. So everyone laughs ‘it’s called FINDING Nemo!’ ok, Finding, not Found, but even with the knowledge that Nemo does get found, I don’t want to go on that emotional journey. That mild peril is too much wobbly crying for me, so nope.

Notting Hill is just perfect.

Oh yes, me too. It seems quite tired (and lazy). Some TV series are really, really bad for this - Supernatural springs to mind.