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andy-gianniotis
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South Park: The Red Badge of Gayness (1999)
A classic episode that has stood the test of time
I came here expecting to see universal praise for one of the more iconic of episodes but it is a mixed bag instead. This is Cartman at his finest (in terms of the episodes to-date at the time it was released) and one of the first episodes where we see his genius at work, instead of just being pathetically funny. How anyone can not see the greatness in this episode is beyond me.
Easily 9 stars.
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
Mad Max meets The Goonies
What a terrible Mad Max movie. I've just finished the UHD version and while visually nice to view and watch, that's really all it's got going for it.
Now, if you dropped all the Mad Max franchise references, it's not that a bad movie but then you'd need to fix the wildly inconsistent tone and to do that you'd have to scrap all of Bartertown or all of the childish children's fantasy paradise where the kid's ages just *do not* add up and it's just not possible.
The Goonies is the movie I was most reminded of when watching this and coincidentally they were both released in the same year, The Goonies screening in the US only a month earlier than Thunderdome. It was like the executives wanted to bring Mad Max to the mainstream but this was not the way to do it. See Fury Road for that.
The musical score was very Gooniesish, and totally, and I mean TOTALLY inappropriate for a Mad Max movie. If the plot gets whatever bad mark it deserves, the score gets at least 3 or 4 points less, it's that terrible.
1985 was the high mark of the culture of the 80s, it was the year Wall Street was released no less with Gordon Gekko's infamous quip "greed is good" and so this is the Mad Max that got made under those conditions. What a shame. And poor George Miller who I'm sure regrets the day the script ever saw the light of day.
This is a good bad movie though. If you conceive of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome as a parody of Mad Max before watching, it will entertain, no question.
The Fosters (2013)
Exceptional 1st episode, fills a gaping void in the family show genre
What an excellent start, i was gripped within the first 2 minutes of watching the excellently paced 1st episode. This show wants you interested right from the start but there's no tricks or flashy style, just good solid drama. The acting is superb, especially from the 2 moms, it was nearly like watching a documentary of a family in action. I also remember thinking the music the show used was particularly appropriate and very complimentary to the visuals.
As the title implies, The Fosters is a show about a foster family but with a nice modern day twist - there are two moms instead of a mom and dad, the eldest son is the biological son of one of the moms from a previous marriage, and then there are the twins, a boy & girl, recently adopted by the family. This is a show concerned about all the people who fall outside of the traditional family existence, about the children who need another family to take them in. And they make it interesting! Really can't emphasize this enough, there was obviously a great effort employed to combine the serious and complex issues with the need to entertain to tell the story, and they did brilliantly, i wasn't bored for a second.
I have to thank the reviewer who summarized The Fosters as "filth", i may not have ever watched it but after reading his/her review i felt it my public duty to actively counteract this act of douchebaggery by watching the show and then actually saying something objective somewhere in my review. I was so glad to see that 0 out of 12 people found his review useful (lol) but because this poorly-disguised rant against homosexuality was the featured user review, and also because there were only 2 reviews at time of writing, i felt it would be useful to be number 3 to let you guys know you won't be wasting your time with this one :)
I really can't think where they fell down, apart from a small complaint that 'who was who' was a little hard to follow at times, even though that by the end you know who is who. I'm taking a hard stance on this point and deducting one from the score.
9/10.