I tend to think 2nd Round K.O. is overrated (and that whole battle was more "important" than it was actually good), but otherwise agree.

At the time, Canibus was a pretty big deal. That debut album was truly terrible and didn't have a viable single, and yet still managed to claw its way to a Gold plaque based on the strength of his name and potential alone, despite being released at a time when the popularity of bling-bling rap should have made it an…

That didn't strike me as much of an insult. I was expecting something considerably harsher.

Ive mentioned it in my personal blog more than once, so I'm right there with you.

People apparently weren't as afraid of clowns back then as so many seemingly are now.

The opening temple collapse / escape in Raiders is my favorite example of this. Indy doesn't make foolish decisions, but one thing after another has an unforeseen consequence that opens up a new challenge. Even just grabbing a vine to pull himself to safety—an obvious decision—almost gets him killed. It's terrific.

Also, I'm just gonna leave the link to this guy's old "Film Students Getting Punched" video here, because it amused me. https://www.youtube.com/wat…

Spielberg, at his best, is outstanding at escalation. He chains together worsening conditions incredibly well.

Anything that directly or indirectly shows some kind of love to the horror genre is a "great job" as far as I'm concerned. Glad to see this here.

I apologize. I've been replying to a lot of different people on this topic and basically just replied to you as if you were making someone else's argument. No excuse. My mistake. Apologies.

I did provide that example. San Andreas. Without Dwayne Johnson, it's probably, at best, Into the Storm numbers-wise. Also, Lucy. Now if you disagree with those examples, then you disagree, but I did provide them.

Technically yes. The same way a shitty painter would still be considered a painter. Tommy Wiseau is a shitty auteur. The root problem with ChRome's argument is the seeming presumption that being an "auteur" is an inherent positive.

"Why even bother with the paragraph before, then?"

Given Dean Norris's "who will people believe" moment in the trailer, it seems a bit doubtful. That's not a line I can recall ever being delivered in a movie by an innocent person.

"Can tell you what it is," isn't mainstream. The average American can tell you what the general definition of heavy metal music is but it isn't and has never been mainstream (almost by definition).

" it turns out most people just like good stories"

Chiaki Kuriyama is not the star of Kill Bill (which also has nowhere near this budget). She's not even the fourth or fifth most important person in the story. Rinko Kikuchi is not the star of Pacific Rim (which did relatively tame initial business). It stars a white guy from a popular cable TV series. (Also, it's a…

I know they haven't even done it in Marvel films. Hence the last paragraph of my comment.

We must have different interpretations of mainstream, somehow. There just aren't many (any?) anime movies that have made anywhere near blockbuster money in the states. The biggest anime profits have come from Pokemon movies, and even those successes have been modest, despite the ubiquity of the Pokemon branding. I'm…

It doesn't have mainstream exposure in the U.S. Anime still doesn't make a tremendous mainstream impact in the U.S. But the U.S. is hardly the only factor—international markets matter at least as much, possibly more so now, so how big is it in territories outside of Japan as well? "A decent reception at Cannes"…