n3ta

dng wrote: Fri Nov 21, 2025 12:34 am i watched the new frankenstein film and it was absolute bollocks. poor old guillermo del toro and his increasingly useles film making abilities (i didn't see pinochio so maybe that was good who knows)

dng wrote: Fri Nov 21, 2025 12:35 am although also i was trying to think if there are any actually good frankenstein films and i'm pretty sure there's not

CandyDarling wrote: Sat Dec 20, 2025 5:36 pm I get what you mean. They've been quite successful at attacking the Trump administration in a way, but it's all so overbearing and the comedy laid down so thickly, it's just not remotely enjoyable.

It's very different to something like, say, Not The Nine O'Clock News or Spitting Image, when they'd have a go at some really horrible thing in the 80s. There you got some kind of actual catharsis from it, whereas with South Park there's no real wit present - everything is just sort of thuddingly obvious and tired. (And to go back further, there's those WWII Looney Tunes shorts with Daffy Duck smashing Hitler over the head with a massive hammer!)

I can't help but compare recent South Park with Stewart Lee's "Man Wolf" show, which tackled some of this stuff and more UK-based horrors in a much more interesting manner. I saw him perform in Basingstoke a few months ago, and despite the grimness of a lot of what he was talking about, I left feeling that I had been actually entertained. (To the point that I went to the merch table and got one of his books and the 7 inch vinyl single of the show's theme music.)

(As a demonstration, here's a joke from Stewart Lee's show written down from memory. I would put this behind a spoiler tag but this feature seems to no longer exist)
STEWART LEE: I'm going to do a knock-knock joke now. Knock-knock!
AUDIENCE: Who's there?
STEWART LEE: Benjamin Netan.
AUDIENCE: Benjamin - (we all suddenly realised what the punchline was, and started laughing)
STEWART LEE: I'm afraid that anyone laughing at that is now at the risk of having to serve a jail sentence of up to 15 years...

Compared to the more playful style of what I saw Lee do on stage, South Park just comes across as feckless and stupid, and they only succeed because the people they're attacking are way more stupid than they are.

The various South Park writers have always dealt in really clunky writing, I think. It was amusing for a bit in the 90s, but it was really starting to pall for me around the fourth season in the space year 2000, let alone now.

Pual wrote: Sat Dec 20, 2025 6:05 pm Basically, satire is shit. If politicians can get you laughing at them then they can get away with murder.

dng wrote: Sat Dec 27, 2025 5:44 pm Also its kind of depressing that a films success is now purely measured in merchandising

dng wrote: Sat Dec 27, 2025 5:47 pm The only other films my mum loves so much are chicken run (the first one only) and paddington (the first two only)

blombluss wrote: Wed Jan 14, 2026 1:45 am I watched Happiest Season, billed as the first mainstream lesbian Christmas rom-com, a few days back, and it's main problem as a rom-com is that one of the main characters behaves badly to their other half throughout the film, and they don't deserve their happy ending. So I thought: 'have I missed something here?', and from what I can tell, those who've watched it are split about 50/50 between those who reckon the movie is really good, and those who kinda think what I think.

On the plus side, I had no idea who Aubrey Plaza (who also thinks the ending is wrong!) is, and she's the best thing in the darn thing!