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Jul. 1st, 2018 03:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatQuiet weekend. Went to massage therapist for work on back, hips, and sinuses, also digestive issues.
And watched a few things, also wrote a bit, and took pictures of flowers. When the news is nasty, I take pictures of flowers. I'd share them with y'all, but can't figure out how to post pics from Facebook or my phone on Dreamwidth.
1. Yellowstone
Written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, and stars Kevin Costner, Kelly Reilly, Luke Grimes, Cole Hauser, Wes Bentley, and various others. It's about a rancher in Montana who is fighting people from invading or taking his land away from him - either for frakking, lumber, land development grabs, water rights, a national park, or providing habitat for the Native American Indians who once resided there. And is a good depiction of why tribalism and capitalism don't work or rather bring out the absolute worst in people. (Your Mileage May Vary, but that's what I took from it.)
I found it to be more compelling and better written than AMC's The Son, which had starred Pierce Bronsan and I couldn't make it past the first fifteen minutes of. This one I've watched three hours worth and it's holding my attention.
Kevin Costner is quite good in it, as is Luke Grimes and Kelly Reilly. And there's clearly a lot of money in it for a Paramount Channel television series. More than ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox series.
The set-up? Dutton, who owns a huge ranch in Montana, is struggling to reunite with his estranged son and run his range. But the local land-developer and big city transplant wants to build a huge housing development next door, which would use a good portion of his water. And the local Native American Indian tribe wants to take his cattle and a portion of his land back. Not helped by the fact that his estranged son, a veteran and decorated solider, has married a Native American Woman and had a son by her. This son is a horse trainer but is making next to nothing on it.
All hell breaks loose when the son's brother-in-law and the local Indian tribe decide to steal a bunch of his father's cattle. And the father fights to steal them back. In the midst of the fighting, one of the Dutton boys is killed, and the son's brother-in-law is killed. The story takes off from there...
It's worth checking out if you like modern Westerns. It's not a soap opera. More a family crime drama on a ranch. Airs on Paramount Network on Thursday Nights. Next episode is in two weeks. (They go on a brief hiatus around the 4th of July...for some reason or other.)
2. Tomb Raider - the new one, starring Dominic West, Alicia Vikanda, Walter Goggins, with Kristen Scott Thomas, Derek Jacobi, and Daniel Wu. It's a lot better than the first one, although that's not saying all that much. Good cast, decent acting, dumb story and script.
Richard Croft: I underestimated your...capacity for -
Lara: stupidity?
Richard: I was going to say bravery.
Me: Actually a little of both. Very brave people also for some reason seem to be REALLY stupid. Oh, my father told me to destroy his journals because this is dangerous and if it got in the wrong hands everyone could die. I know, instead of destroying them, I'll go find him and figure out what this dangerous thing is that will destroy the world.
And while I'm at it, I'll go buy myself, I won't access any of his money to help, and I won't worry about being robbed and just loosely hold my backpack and ask for information.
And...take the most rickety boat I can find with a drunken captain out into dangerous waters.
Seriously??? Indiana Jones was at least intelligent. No wonder this did not do well. I spent most of the time thinking, how dumb are you?
Other that it was a lot of fun.
And watched a few things, also wrote a bit, and took pictures of flowers. When the news is nasty, I take pictures of flowers. I'd share them with y'all, but can't figure out how to post pics from Facebook or my phone on Dreamwidth.
1. Yellowstone
Written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, and stars Kevin Costner, Kelly Reilly, Luke Grimes, Cole Hauser, Wes Bentley, and various others. It's about a rancher in Montana who is fighting people from invading or taking his land away from him - either for frakking, lumber, land development grabs, water rights, a national park, or providing habitat for the Native American Indians who once resided there. And is a good depiction of why tribalism and capitalism don't work or rather bring out the absolute worst in people. (Your Mileage May Vary, but that's what I took from it.)
I found it to be more compelling and better written than AMC's The Son, which had starred Pierce Bronsan and I couldn't make it past the first fifteen minutes of. This one I've watched three hours worth and it's holding my attention.
Kevin Costner is quite good in it, as is Luke Grimes and Kelly Reilly. And there's clearly a lot of money in it for a Paramount Channel television series. More than ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox series.
The set-up? Dutton, who owns a huge ranch in Montana, is struggling to reunite with his estranged son and run his range. But the local land-developer and big city transplant wants to build a huge housing development next door, which would use a good portion of his water. And the local Native American Indian tribe wants to take his cattle and a portion of his land back. Not helped by the fact that his estranged son, a veteran and decorated solider, has married a Native American Woman and had a son by her. This son is a horse trainer but is making next to nothing on it.
All hell breaks loose when the son's brother-in-law and the local Indian tribe decide to steal a bunch of his father's cattle. And the father fights to steal them back. In the midst of the fighting, one of the Dutton boys is killed, and the son's brother-in-law is killed. The story takes off from there...
It's worth checking out if you like modern Westerns. It's not a soap opera. More a family crime drama on a ranch. Airs on Paramount Network on Thursday Nights. Next episode is in two weeks. (They go on a brief hiatus around the 4th of July...for some reason or other.)
2. Tomb Raider - the new one, starring Dominic West, Alicia Vikanda, Walter Goggins, with Kristen Scott Thomas, Derek Jacobi, and Daniel Wu. It's a lot better than the first one, although that's not saying all that much. Good cast, decent acting, dumb story and script.
Richard Croft: I underestimated your...capacity for -
Lara: stupidity?
Richard: I was going to say bravery.
Me: Actually a little of both. Very brave people also for some reason seem to be REALLY stupid. Oh, my father told me to destroy his journals because this is dangerous and if it got in the wrong hands everyone could die. I know, instead of destroying them, I'll go find him and figure out what this dangerous thing is that will destroy the world.
And while I'm at it, I'll go buy myself, I won't access any of his money to help, and I won't worry about being robbed and just loosely hold my backpack and ask for information.
And...take the most rickety boat I can find with a drunken captain out into dangerous waters.
Seriously??? Indiana Jones was at least intelligent. No wonder this did not do well. I spent most of the time thinking, how dumb are you?
Other that it was a lot of fun.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-01 10:50 pm (UTC)Yeah, the script was dumb in places. It's based loosely on the current generation of Tomb Raider games, and the farther the script get's from those games (like Lara having no advanced education, refusing to access her inheritance, blundering around in a foreign country as if she's had no experience outside of England, in general being a clueless rebel) the sillier it gets. The games always recognized she would have to be rich to travel around as she does. The game, from which the trip to the island was taken, has her clearly on a scholarly expedition with fellow students. And though the ship wrecks on the island in the game, it was not some random rusty tub. Some of the ideas I didn't like in the movie were actually borrowed/stolen from a different video game series, Uncharted. Uncharted is a fine series on it's own, but its very much different in tone and character from Tomb Raider.
The good parts of the movie include: Lara as she is in the current generation of games; not a freak of nature; not running around in shorts and a tank top through the jungle; trying to avoid some of the outright nonsense (fun though it was) of the early games. Okay, the instant-death plague was pretty much nonsense (and that was stolen from Uncharted), but it at least went with the flow of the movie. I like the current games where Lara looks like a woman, who sweats and gets dirty, not the old sexy cartoon character who never got so much as wet for longer than it took to leave a room. There is plenty of action in the movie and this Lara seems to be able to learn. I think it would have been better if they had stayed closer to the story in the game, but I've heard complaints from others that they thought it was too close and thus too predictable. Take your choice.
The current games are better than the movie Just as in a book there is much more time to fill out Lara's personality. But I liked the movie and I'd pay to see another one.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-02 02:50 am (UTC)Anyhow as a result, I'm completely oblivious to the video games and their stories. So just watched as a hopefully fun female adventure flick (which there aren't much of).
So..from a film standpoint? It's better than the Angelina Jolie version. Alas... I don't think they are doing a second one. It bombed at the box office.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-02 03:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-02 12:15 pm (UTC)Probably not. The lead actress didn't sign on for another one, they lost her according to the link I provided. According to the write-ups, it bombed. (For a sequel, it has to take in double the amount it cost to make it, worldwide and domestic. It was high budget.)
no subject
Date: 2018-07-02 02:45 am (UTC)Indeed. It's like in "Spinal Tap" where they say there's a thin line between clever and stupid.
Bravery involves taking risks. Which, if you are a bad judge of how dangerous those risks are, can make you seem very foolish indeed...
no subject
Date: 2018-07-02 02:54 am (UTC)Exactly. Quite a few Darwin Awards have been given to people who just weren't great judges of dangerous risks.