I think that stuff was impressive, however the bit what stuck out for me was that whilst he was incredibly driven, he also comes across as a genuinely nice bloke. Going back up to help find and rescue other climbers or going out of his way to cheer them up.
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The pure physical ability / strength for me along with that compassion you mention. Even before he started climbing those high peaks his driven nature is incredible.
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The matrix: steaming pile of sh*t. The first twenty minutes was kind of fun tongue in cheek poking fun at themselves and all the different matrix takes out there, but a movie never really broke out. It was awful.
New bond: I enjoyed it. The villain wasn’t the best. But had some good action/ chase scenes, entertaining movie.
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Has Nims Purjah credited CardiffPete yet for his achievements?
There was a scene in the new Matrix where Neo was trying to figure out what to do, and Pete walked in and said he could fix his problem in 2 minutes but wouldn’t because Neo can fuck himself. Then he started laughing to himself and walked off.
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Watched Val Kilmer’s documentary ‘Val’ last night. He’s collected so much home footage it’s incredible. One of my favourite actors. Quite sad what he’s going through.
Eventually got around to watching The Rise of Skywalker last night. I hadn’t done so before as most people I’d spoken about it with had panned it.
I loved it. Would have preferred a slightly different ending but other than that I thought it was really solid, one of the better -equels.
I would like to recommend an absolute gem of a movie. Willys wonderland. Any parent who has ever had to suffer through Chuck E Cheese with their kids will appreciate it. It stars Nic Cage beating the shit out of demonic animatronics. It is phenomenally bonkers
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My issue with that film was it had too much to try and fix after the utter mess of the film that went before it. Even as I consider myself a Star Wars geek I cant remember the name of that film.
For me the problem was that it wasted it’s time trying to ‘fix’ the plotlines from the Last Jedi, none of which were actually problematic.
The Last Skywalker was not actually that bad and had some enjoyable and memorable moments, but would have been all the better if the powers that be had not shat the bed because some fans got butt hurt by the events of the second movie.
It threw characters under the bus, tried to retcon too many things while introducing entirely new elements, so the whole thing ended up a bit bloated.
The takeaway for Lucasfilm should be ideally have a single director/writer if you’re making a multiple movie arc of have a Kevin Feige type person to work on every movie to ensure some degree of cohesion.
But that’s all just my opinion.
In my view, all 3 of the sequels were rubbish compared to what could have been done.
There was plenty of options in existing source material that could have been used like Dark Jedi, Thrawn trilogy, Young Jedi , Legacy of the Force New Jedi Order. The creating of orignial material which ignored existing cannon was just terrible
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14 Peaks. If anything, cramming all that into less than 2 hours diminished how difficult it was. Climbing 21 straight hours to reach one of the first peaks, running the lines up K2 in the middle of the night when the overhang was frozen. For me Nimsdai Purja’s background in British Special forces is the key element. Those guys suffer and suffer in that training.
Good to see the Nepali’s get some publicity because they’ve been dragging Westerners up those mountains forever. A few years ago I read Wade Davis’s Into the Silence about the Mallory expeditions up Everest in the 1920s. Awesome read, by the way. When the British got there for the first expedition, none of the Nepali understood why they wanted to climb the mountain. To them the mountains were sacred, not something to be conquered.
Then to Reinhold Messner’s climbing all fourteen peaks without oxygen. That’s crazy. Wonder if anyone else has done it.
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Is it a movie or documentary?
Documentary. Very much worth watching.
Watched Departed again the other night. On first watch I enjoyed it more than the Hong Kong original. I thought it was richer in plot, deeper and fleshed things out more. Yet on rewatching it I was less impressed. There were a couple of jumps in plot I didnt follow (how did he know that they knew that he knew?) so unsure whether I just gave it too much credit the first time or didnt follow as closely this time because it was so familiar.
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Should be shown in schools. Get off your arses and graft like an absolute boss.
Wasn’t impressed with the Departed at all. But then I’m not a big Di Caprio fan.
It felt like it didn’t get anywhere close to its potential. The story, Scorsese, Nicholson, Wahlberg, Damon, Baldwin…it felt like it could have been so much better. Like it was rushed.
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In retrospect it might have been, because on this repeated watch it really did feel like a couple of key plot developments were told not shown. But the reason I liked it so much more than the Hong Kong version was because in all those areas it took its time more. The character arcs were far more believable making you understand why the two guys were where they were, rather than the feeling I got from the HK version of just being told “bent cop and fake gangster”.
So I think it took its time more than the original, but might have benefited from doing so even more.
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Good film on Netflix at the moment…
Fracture… Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling
2007 but still a 9/10