Movie Moan: Kristina Royale
Sun, August 1, 2010 
As a part of Phil Gee's Epic Birthday Bonanza, the Movie Moan podcast is joined this week by our good pal Kristina. For those at home wondering everyone's favorite British Gentleman Agent turns twenty-seven.
So it's with that another of his highly-anticipated releases The A-Team hit cinemas in the U.K. this week and he gives us his thoughts and Lou gives his $.02 on seeing Inception a second time. Yes, there's a brief chat giving out spoilers and once again, listen at your own warning if you’ve yet to see Chris Nolan's latest.
In the week of news, there's the Thor Comic-Con sizzle-reel getting leaked online, Guillermo del Toro finally gets his shot at adapting At the Mountains of Madness, Total Recall getting remade (and helmed by Len Wiseman), J.J. Abrams producing Boilerplate: History's Mechanical Marvel and the continued troubles of one Mel Gibson.
To wrap this week's show is a lengthy discussion on the future of the home video market, video-store chains, DVD/Blu-Ray special features, double-dipping and the works.
Reader Comments (6)
I must confess (and I feel a bit dirty admitting this), but I've done an exceptional amount of downloading in the past year, but to be honest... I've watched maybe 3 % of those downloads. I still buy DVD's, but I'm getting to the point where I'm a lot more choosey about what I buy, mainly because of space issues ; I haven't counted them recently, but I must have atleast 400 DVDS!
Also, as far as rentals are concerned, nothing pisses me off more than renting a film that someone has scratched to buggery! That was the main thing that attracted me to downloading.
I agree with pretty much everything you guys said about extra features. If it isn't an older film, they tend to not be worth a damn. The most entertaining, recent commentary I can think of is Malcom MacDowell's for Caligula, which managed to make an awful film seem more bearable.
On a side note, am I the only one who found The A-Team totally charmless? It just felt like a louder, vastly more expensive, over-long episode of the show, but with none of the chemistry of the original cast members. Neeson and Copley were okay, but they weren't given much to do ; Cooper and Jackson were obnoxious and wooden, respectively. Biel was just there for window dressing. The action sequences were Wolverine level (Fuck you, Fox!). Most disapointed with this film! 4/10 from me. Infact, it's made me more curious about seeing The Expendables, when I wasn't that bothered about it, before hand.
BTW, Happy Birthday, Phil! You are now as old as me!
Sorry Welshfilmbuff, I should have given you a shout out on the show as well since you emailed me this week.
That's a fascinating statistic you bring up. How much time (not that we advocate this you understand) do you spend downloading all that stuff versus the time you spent watching it?
I too have listened to the MacDowell commentary for 'Caligula' and you're absolutely right (and owning that film makes me feel dirty even though I find the film the most fascinating kind of car wreck that you can't look away from).
We'll see who else agrees with you on 'The A-Team' but I had a blast with it. It was an action film that hit its marks and that's all I wanted. It could have been so much worse (trust me on this, I've read one of the earlier drafts).
I wouldn't like to say how much time I've spent downloading stuff, but it has to be a lot of electricity that I've spent ; I leave my computer running over night sometimes. I did read something interesting once that said, people who do the most downloading are more likely to end up buying stuff. Sometimes it is incredibly hard to download certain things (like Captain Ed mentioned), but more often or not, it couldn't be easier ; for example, I downloaded G.I Joe: The Rise of the Cobra (which I DID see in the cinema) last christmas and it took less than half an hour to download. Have I ever watched that download? Hmm... I checked to see if the quality was fine (there was still a lot of shitty cam-jobs at that point), but I haven't really watched it A) Because it wasn't that good a film and B) if you are going to watch a film like that, it's pointless watching it on a laptop ; it has to be on the biggest TV set you can find.
Also, I should point out that a lot of the downloading I do is for "obscure" films, that aren't available commercially (Cinemageddon is a good place for that).
While I'm at it, here's a fantastic song from the great Adam Buxton on this subject :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLZpxVI7Pa8
I don't know if its just me, but I've been having problems making links clickable on this site.
Happy Birthday Phil Gee!!!! I don't own any movies in blu-ray. I'll stick to dvd. I agree 100% with Kristina about the Thor trailer it didn't grab me but neither did The Incredible Hulk trailer but I ended up liking the movie alot so who knows. Jamie is right theater will never end! Hey Phil keep those shout-outs coming. :)
Kristina should be in more future movie moan podcast. She was great in The Dark Knight discussion that was deleted off youtube.