Synchtube Tropers (Riff on Videos and Movies)

Yeah, I thought it was a confusing mess. No wonder I had a hard time remembering the details. I do remember someone saying something about throwing a grenade without taking the pin out.

Anyone here update to Windows 10 yet? I mean, the update is free, but I'm not sure if I'd want to do it just yet, depending on what it does to my icons and the like. I was thinking of holding off on an update until I buy an Ultra HD monitor and a new graphics card.

@Radar: So I suppose Mr. Holmes was neither fun nor riffable?

I anticipated as much, but I'm surprised to learn read he didn't get to do anything of consequence, following what he said before he was taken hostage at the end of the first act; based on that much, I figured on him eventually either doing something heroic to "redeem" himself or doing something stupid to finally get himself killed.

I think maybe something happened... in his general vicinity... but I was out of the room when whatever it was happened. You'd have to ask Bons or somebody.

Tonight it's all about ADVENTURE.

First some adventure from the 1980s with the Legend of Zelda cartoon. Then some adventure from the 1990s with The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, which takes place a few years after the Jonny Quest movie we'd seen on Monday.

Then at 8 PM EST, the live action adventure of the generically-named Journey 2: The Mysterious Island featuring The Rock and Peeta.

Come on in!

http://cytu.be/r/tropercoven

~Morgikit ~Lewattoo ~Noaqiyeum ~FingerPuppet ~ColonelCathcart ~CompletelyNormalGuy ~WilliamRadarStorm ~TAPETRVE ~PhysicalStamina ~Wuggles ~Rockonman ~Germi91 ~SpaceWolf ~Bisected8

The Rock and Teenager 2: Electric Boogaloo: The Sequel: The Return: Featuring Giant Bees

This movie spawned this gif◊.

Here's our cast of characters:

• Douchebag (Peeta)
• Cocky (The Rock)
• Stuck-up know-it-all snarky old guy (Michael Caine)
• Hot girl
• Comic relief fat Funny Foreigner

The characters are ALL meant to be funny or used for humor. How annoying.

The adventure had many things happen in it, but it felt super generic and not that interesting when I first watched it. Mainly, the problem being that it didn't make the adventurous moments feel adventurous, or the characters ones I could care about. As a GOOD movie, it fails badly. I can see my nephew, who turns 7 in a few weeks, liking it, to be honest. It does move at a fast clip and he'd probably laugh at some of its dumber jokes.

Rewatching and riffing this movie with you guys was way more fun. There was a lot to laugh at. And yes, some of them were the comic relief guy's unfunny jokes, and even some of The Rock's occasionally genuinely funny jokes. The lack of genuinely exciting adventure or interesting characters was made up for by the movie's constant stupid attempts at humor, dumb ways it fails to make adventurous moments feel truly adventurous, "exciting" scenes that don't always make sense, solutions and threats that sometimes feel like a major Ass Pull, and just the unending parade of big budget dumb. It's DUMB. "Bad, but enjoyably so," as Germi put it.

We got a lot of mileage out of that gif◊, I might add. Colonel says it's his new favorite.

Ultimately, it got ★★★. All but one person voted that way - the dissenting vote was a 2.

edited 30th Jul '15 6:46:58 PM by BonsaiForest

When compared to the other Mysterious Island movie, I find it interesting that this got a higher score despite being way dumber. Okay, I guess that's why it got a higher score. But at least it was fun in the way it was dumb. Stupid fun beats boring any day.

And yeah, I'd call the character interactions stupid alright. They're ALL used for humor. As in, Douchebag Boy puts the moves on Hot Girl, but gets shot down! Ha ha! Snarky Old Guy is constantly belittling Cocky Dad! Ha ha! Fat Funny Foreigner did something stupid or clumsy! Ha ha! Douchebag Boy assumed the islanders didn't speak English despite the fact that the island's (real life) official language is English! Ha ha!

Adventurous scenes like diving underwater to fix an old submarine, harpooning a giant electric eel, riding giant bees to escape giant birds, and more, should be exciting, but the movie aims for the "big dumb fun" style of action rather than intelligent action where I can feel like the heroes are actually clever. Attempts at drama fall flat, especially with the cheesy humor inserted into them. Okay, the only attempt at drama I saw that I thought actually worked was when the Funny Foreigner promised his Hot Girl daughter that she'd get to go to college, while she was lamenting her lack of chances in life. Unfortunately, it was then ruined by terrible acting in the very next scene, when Hot Girl realized that her dad had left, solo, for the golden volcano. Seriously, could you sound a little concerned or upset or something?? I blame bad directing, since the actress showed that she can act in earlier scenes in the movie.

Anyway, yeah, big budget family adventure that goes the "make the kids laugh" route for character "development", and which relies on fancy dumb big action-adventure scenes that simply look cool, over logical scenes that attempt to flow from the characters' knowledge or what seems logically possible.

For as bonkers and Lost-y as it was, Dinosaur Island at least made more sense, had more fleshed out characters who felt more human, and attempted to make its action-adventure scenes more suspenseful, and its character-driven scenes more dramatic. It could have been better, but it did a genuinely better job than Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, and I feel that it worked better as an actual movie.

One good thing I'll say about the characters in Journey 2 is that despite how one-note they appear at first, they do at least show some hidden depth. Hot Girl is upset about living in a poor country and not having opportunities in life. Her clumsy Funny Foreigner dad genuinely cares about her and wants his family to succeed. Douchebag Boy's motivation was to find his lost grandfather, who he believed had gone missing on this island. (He's right.) And Cocky Dad is shown to genuinely care about his son. Walden Media is big on pro-family themes, and they certainly got them into the movie. The rest, though, is just... cheese.

Still, I think part of why I enjoyed this movie more this time than the first time I saw it years ago is because at least this time, I knew it was going to be stupid, and was watching it specifically for that reason. As a result, it didn't disappoint.

edited 31st Jul '15 6:42:22 AM by BonsaiForest

That .gif... I have no words. Anyway...

Oh, Ho-Oh-HOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo...

Mark Dacascos is back in Kung Fu Friday tonight (and there will be more of him around during next month's coven anniversary festivities) in the role of an ex-Special Forces soldier who returns to his former high school, which has been overrun by drugs and violence. But when he vows to straighten out the school's worst students by teaching them martial arts, will the local drug lord (who also happens to be a martial arts master) tolerate his positive influence in the lives of rebellious youth? FIND OUT!

I give you... Only the Strong.

Trailer

edited 31st Jul '15 7:52:58 AM by SeanMurrayI

So it's "The Karate Kid" meets "Dangerous Minds". Or "To Sir with Love", "Lean on Me", "Dead Poets Society", "Music of the Heart"...

Dammit, don't make me regret showing up tomorrow...

...did I say something wrong?

It was my favorite gif until I remembered Ghost Shark existed.

It'll still go down as a classic Coven gif.

/pecs

/pecs

/pecs motherfuckers

edited 31st Jul '15 4:21:28 PM by BonsaiForest

I changed that to simply /pecs.

Sorry, but Bael and I aren't going to be there tonight. We kind of want to have some personal time together. Though I may have a recommendation later. We'll see what we think of it.

Morg: Nothing wrong, just that the premise of the movie makes it sound rather tepid.

A pleasant Friday night to you both. I'm definitely curious as to find out later what you get to watching together. Anyway...

Oh, Ho-Oh-HOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooo...

Time to kick off another Kung Fu Friday with the usual starting course of awful dubbing and Godfrey Ho stupidity.

Then, at the top of the coming hour, we check out the great Mark Dacascos in Only the Strong.

Join us! http://cytu.be/r/TroperCoven

~Bisected8 ~Lewattoo ~Noaqiyeum ~Finger Puppet ~Colonel Cathcart ~Completely Normal Guy ~William Radar Storm ~TAPETRVE ~Physical Stamina ~wuggles ~Rockonman ~Germi91 ~Space Wolf ~Pyrite

edited 31st Jul '15 4:15:36 PM by SeanMurrayI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5eH8ZrV2Cs

There's an interview, 10 years later, with the actors from the kid-made movie Bradley's Summer.

edited 1st Aug '15 6:12:30 AM by BonsaiForest

Again, the sad news yesterday evening was Roddy Piper's untimely passing at the age of 61. Professional wrestling aside, we will remember him here for compounding the activities of Kicking Ass with Chewing Bubblegum, rescuing kidnapped women from mutant frog people in a post-apocalyptic hellscape in Hell Comes to Frogtown (), and appearing in a direct-to-video Die Hard ripoff playing toadie to Andrew "Dice" Clay where he is bludgeoned to death with a sack of ice cubes by the wife of Gene Simmons (also a , disappointing). He will be greatly missed, but may his legend live on.

Anyway, tonight's title has some history behind it. British newspaper comic strip which began publishing in the 1960's that Vincent Vega enjoys reading on the toilet◊ in Pulp Fiction was adapted into a hokey movie in 1966 with the likes of Dick Bogarde and Terence Stamp! It's not nearly as well remembered as the source material. Here is... Modesty Blaise.

Groovy Trailer

NOTE: The movie will be starting at around 7:35 PM (EDT) (in other words, 25 minutes earlier than usual).

edited 1st Aug '15 10:09:46 AM by SeanMurrayI

To answer your question, Sean, Bael and I watched the first five episodes of Gargoyles, which form a five part miniseries that was released on video at one point. It's a very good series, though finding a free copy was not easy.

Oh, wow, that takes me back.

I know right? Some decent quality episodes used to be on You Tube, but i'm sure they've been deleted. Apparently Disney uploaded Season 1 and then set it to private. We found the episodes we were looking for on Dailymotion. They weren't cropped or sped up, which is about as much as you can ask for these days.

By the way, I completely forgot to mention when announcing Modesty Blaise tonight that the movie will be starting at around 7:35 PM (EDT) (in other words, 25 minutes earlier than usual).

I'm amending the OP and my original announcement to include that detail.

I watched some of that 10 Years Later video of the actors in Bradley's Summer. Interestingly, the actor who played Bradley said that he was afraid of having to kiss a girl. His brother refused the part out of fear of having to kiss a girl. Bradley's actor said, "She just kissed me on the cheek, and I later went home and cried." Wow, damn. The fuck?

Most of these actors said that this was their one and only role. The cook said she auditioned for multiple roles and got none of them. One of the actors who played a cop says he only got walk-on roles after that.

The actor who played the lead bad guy - the butler - said the plot was loaded with coincidences and sounded corny, but he thought what the hell, and sprung for it. He says that for being such a funky, weird, corny movie, the kids who created it did a really good job with the characters and learned a lot about telling a story. He even said that he used to have a "detective club" when he was the same age as the kids in the movie, and used to go on all kinds of little adventures. He said he also had friends similar to Crisco and Kaitlyn and even a "leader type guy who's new to the area" like Bradley.

edited 1st Aug '15 11:07:59 AM by BonsaiForest

Catching the cooties will do that to a kid.

Intriguing to hear from the adult actors. I just assumed they were some of the adults running the filmmaking program, or even parents/relatives of the kids. Surprised roles like the butler were actually offered to outside talent, but I can completely see why any of those actors would struggle to find more work after appearing in this (especially if they had no other material for an audition reel; I doubt that the poor woman who played the cook would be in high demand after she shows anyone those scenes).

edited 1st Aug '15 11:31:49 AM by SeanMurrayI