Most Disappointing Movie of 2014?

@molfsontan Same here!

@fjp999 I had a long response - edited and when I hit the "Say it" button I got the "forbidden" screen! Oh well, later!

@fjp999 That happens if you completed your editing after the maximum allowable time for edits.

@molfsontan I enjoyed Grand Budapest Hotel. Beautiful cinematography.

@denton lol I didnt think anyone had high expectations. It's Seth McFarlane...

@xEBRONx Yep. I love Family Guy. American Dad is so so. The Cleavland Show sucks. Can you spot the trend?

@Headly I actually Think American Dad is superior to Family Guy. As much as I love Family Guy, I think it is time to end it.

@denton The trailer was hilarious.

@denton @SSteve They gave away ALL the good jokes in the trailers. The movie had a few really good laughs, but they were all spoiled by the trailers. So the movie was disapointing, and tried to hard too tell a story instead of just being funny.

@Starblind the beginning of godzilla: "hey, remember what brian cranston looked like with hair?"

@Starblind I thought it was on-point for a Godzilla movie, 1000% more then the Matthew Broderick version (which is probably why my expectations were very low), but could have had more awesome mega monster fighting. Pacific Rim was amazing because Guillermo Del Toro is fantastic. It set itself above Godzilla, being it's own thing in the Kaiju genre. I hope Pacific Rim 2 will turn out just as good.

@Starblind I'm probably the opposite. Mostly what I realized when we saw it is that I'm not the kind of guy who likes Godzilla movies. The "boring" parts were the best parts for me.

@Starblind I thought it was ok, but not enough city smashing.

@Starblind Yeah, not enough Godzilla. Pass.

@HELLOALICE Ah, but that's what I mean: The Monuments Men really seemed like something I would love.

@HELLOALICE I pretty much only go to movies I don't enjoy. Because friends. Hohum.

@Headly Second. I just kept saying, "Get on with it and stop stalling". Although, I also read the book, so I knew what was going to happen. I downloaded "The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit", wich is a fan cut of the three films, taking out the stupid love story and useless scenes. Watching that this weekend.

@The_Baron OMG link please.

@Headly https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com/ It is actually very well done. They cut all three down to a 4hr movie. It's huge though.

@The_Baron Thanks. I have a 1TB DropBox account and a 125 Mb connection for occasions such as this.

@Headly Got it. I shall watch it and report back.

@Headly Well, I made it to 24 minutes so far then my Roky refused to play any more. I suspect the encoding. I'm transcoding the video now. I will say that the "cleaning up" scene has been removed, which was a good scene and was definitely in the book... Feeling kinda meh.

@Headly he cut too much and cut scenes that shoudn't have been cut. while i agree that there is way too much added crap, he cut vital scenes, like the dwarves in the trees reacued by the eagles. "tolkien edit" is not accurate... meh.

@Headly There was a 4GB "lower res" cut before this last edit, which worked better. My Plex server can't work out the correct aspect ratio for this one, so I didn't watch it. The previous cut might have been better, before he started listening to other people.

@cengland0 I hate "shakey" fight scenes. It sucks when the fight scene is so lame they have to shake and jerk the camera around to make it appear more active.

I like purple

@Barney Yeah, that was the best part.

@Barney Obviously we know what your favorite movie is.

@SSteve Awwww. Purple!

@cengland0 It's been a while since I've read American Cinematographer, so I'm not sure if it's cinematographers still having to deal with a more limited dynamic range of the digital cameras compared to film and deciding they want more details in shadows than highlights or just a style choice that's in vogue right now.

@cengland0 Music louder than the talking I would say is more likely to be a poorly configured sound system, either at home or in the theater. When you mix sound it's surprising how low the music can be and yet still know it's there without it being distracting.

@cengland0 Lens flare: I blame J.J. Abrams.

@jqubed It's definitely not a problem with the sound system at home. I used to be an audiophile and had expensive gear and still had that problem. The voice track should come out of the front center speaker and you should be able to adjust that higher if you want but they blend it in where if you attempt to adjust the voice higher, the music goes up with it.

Regarding J. J. Abrams, I agree he is to blame in some of his movies and recently had received many complaints and apologized for it.

@jqubed And speaking about separation, when Dolby Digital / AC3 and DTS first came out, so many movies took great advantage of that. My guests were surprised of the quality and actually thought someone was knocking on the window behind them, or it was really raining outside, or that some was talking next to them. Now the separation is not as great and it's hard to find a movie where an object moves from one speaker to another (some movies still do it but not a large quantity).

@cengland0 Maybe the studios are cheaping out on talented engineers. When I was in school they told us the top people were making $500/hour. Audio seems often-overlooked, though. Without audio it's just a fancy slideshow. One breaking news situation I did audio for was being submitted for an Emmy nomination and I asked if I could be included. The guy putting them together thought I should be, but left the decision to the News Director (person in charge of the whole news department). He said my part was "not integral" to the newscast. I wanted to say, "please just take my part out then, since it wasn't important." In one sense I could see saying just the producer, reporters, and assignment desk people get on the nomination, but if the director and other technical people are going to be on there, the audio person should be too. I was almost glad when it didn't win, but we really killed it that day.

@jqubed Station I worked for here in Florida the only people submitted for a news piece was the shooter, reporter, and News Director. If you were in production you didn't count. Even the Director was treated like a TD.

@cengland0 That's a lot to discuss. Briefly: the darkness and lens flare are definitely "trends" right now. Loud music and close-up fight sequences cover up bad/no fight choreography. Pretty much all the nits you picked are in movies that are made simply because they will make money because they look like another movie that made money. Usually a bad action movie trying to be "300" or "Transformers", because they both made gobs of money. Finally, as far as getting hit and reacting quickly - that's something you can train yourself to do (take a martial art of some kind and you'll learn pretty quick how to ignore the initial pain), so I don't have a problem with that most of the time. In summation: US movies tend to have crappy action and rely on gimmicks that worked before. Watch Korean/Thai/Chinese action movies if you want to see the action (The Raid and The Raid 2 for example) and stick to Oscar-bait Hollywood movies for non-lens flare and general decent quality.

@Teripie That was great. "Get ready. For. Nitpicking." Yeah, I thought it was a great movie, but I'm not at all a fanboy, so what do I know? Though, actually, my fanboy friends liked it too.

@Teripie I enjoy Honest Trailers, that always crack me up.

@phatmass +1000 - Lord, that movie was HORRIBLE. Oh Nick Cage, WHY?! Even the $$ couldn't have been worth it.

@goldenthorn Dear filmmakers: if Jean Cocteau has already made it, you cannot top it. That is all.

@Pavlov I was so disappointed.

@The_Baron I struggled to finish the movie. And I'd heard such good things about it! Not sure how that movie sucked so hard.

@pwinn Disney wanted to package it all up for a more broad crowd, instead of being true to Sondheim's vision. This means they had to re-write some crucial scenes, muting/softening them for the younger crowd.

@The_Baron why why WHY was keith richards, i mean johnny depp in that movie? and why was he the only character that was totally cartoony?

@vampje Maybe because he did Sweeney Todd, some wierd deal with Sondheim. Probably because they were trying to cram as many big names in the film as possible.

@The_Baron but he gets top billing for lessthan 10 minutes in the film.

@capguncowboy Sharknado was a terrible movie but a financial success . . . I truly weep for this country at times.

@capguncowboy We watched Sharknado on Netflix in about 15 minutes heavy on the fastforward, but stopping for the parts that looked most awesomely absurd. It was indeed so horrible it was almost good in a way. Worth 15 minutes at least. I'd do the same for 2. Not sure my wife is as enthusiastic.

@capguncowboy I mean… it was supposed to be terrible, right? It's kind of like being surprised that the dump you just took is brown?

@brhfl I like purple?

LOL, @Barney!

@Keyeno I made sure I went to a theatre where I could get and stay drunk for The Interview. I hate paying theatre prices for shit like that (and then, a theatre where you can drink and eat dinner sucks up even more of your wallet), but it was certainly entertaining once I socked it to my liver.

@brhfl I stayed home to watch The Interview. I live in a dry state so I have to suffer making my own mixers. ;)

@Mehrocco_Mole You haven't been to my gym after someone lost a racquetball game. You should hear the language between serves too.