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What Is The Last Film You Watched? (Older Films)


Mr. Breathmask

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Arnold would have turned it down. Dear God we don't need a part two.

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24 minutes ago, JoeinAR said:

Arnold would have turned it down. Dear God we don't need a part two.

 

I didn't watch the whole movie. I decided to watch it as a 2-part movie. Tonight part 2!

 

 

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Oh okay. Then prepare yourself for sci-fi film cliches

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Demolition Man

This landed on HBO Max the other day. 

 

It's coming true, much like Idiocracy. They saw the future. 

 

A world with friendly cops untrained in physical violence would be mellow greetings indeed. 

 

No spicy or chocolate? Heavens no, child, what kind of world is that? 

 

But can someone PLEASE explain the three seashells? 

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20 hours ago, JoeinAR said:

Oh okay. Then prepare yourself for sci-fi film cliches

 

Yikes! it's was terrible! Especially the daughter/father drama bits. I don't see Chris Patt winning any Oscars in the foreseeable future.

 

Spoiler: 

 

Spoiler

If was a relief, though, to see that the monsters were cargo and not the aliens that came with spaceship to Earth. 

 

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32 minutes ago, Sweeping Strings said:

Haven't seen it myself, but I'd imagine that its depiction of an interracial gay relationship would've been somewhat groundbreaking in the mid-80s.  

Yes, sure, and the concept around this is unique. But the actual film just isn't that good. 

 

Karol

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2 hours ago, crocodile said:

Yes, sure, and the concept around this is unique. But the actual film just isn't that good. 

 

Karol

Neither was Brokeback Mountain. Most overrated "gay" film ever.

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On 7/1/2021 at 5:48 PM, Edmilson said:

I watched this one on Netflix a few months ago, it's great! Had no idea DeNiro could be this funny.

He’s done a lot of comedy in the past 20 years or so. 

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The Watch movie review & film summary (2012) | Roger Ebert

 

The Watch

 

One of the few mainstream comedy films of the 2010s we had never seen.  It ended up being pretty funny and interesting; Not at all a cliched or by the numbers comedy.  It's really a sci-fi/action/comedy blend kind of like a ghostbusters or men in black or whatever.  As a big fan of The IT Crowd it was great to see Richard Ayoade in something else, and he was very funny here.  Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller were more or less their usual selves, but Jonah Hill was actually not a variant of his usual characters which was nice.  R Lee Ermy, Billy Crudup, Erin Moriarty (from The Boys!), Nicolas Braun (from Succession!), Will Forte, Mel Rodriguez (Last Man On Earth reunion!), and all three Lonely Island guys even show up.  It was all quite fun!

 

It's free on HBO Max

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Robert Altman's IMAGES – F for Films

 

Images

 

Well that was one of the strangest moves I have ever seen in my life.  If John Williams hadn't scored this, I doubt I would have ever comes across it.  I think it's worth seeing to know the context of the score, but outside of that, it's one of those artsy films that does not tell a cohesive narrative, it's more of an exploration of insanity that isn't interested in ever being clear about what's real and what isn't.

 

I will say it was never boring, so it isn't a 100 minute slog or anything, it moves pretty briskly through its machinations.


It's free on Hoopla

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1 hour ago, Jay said:

it's one of those artsy films that does not tell a cohesive narrative, it's more of an exploration of insanity that isn't interested in ever being clear about what's real and what isn't.

I was surprised how

Spoiler

kind of straightforward it became by the end. All throughout she starts figuring out the "mechanism" of her insanity along with the audience - her double can't be real, her dead lover can't be real, sometimes they can appear to replace a real person but sometimes they're just there in addition to the people in the room. She knows the love scene with all 3 didn't happen, so when Marcel appears to remember it, she knows she's free to "kill" him, since he's not real. Both her and the audience are left in suspenseful doubt until we all find out she was right. But then the tragedy is that she gets overconfident and drives over her double, who was at that moment replacing her husband.

 

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Hmmm, that's a good point actually.


I still don't know if I can say I "liked" the film, but it was certainly more interesting than the usual fair.  Who knows, I may even appreciate it more next time!

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1 minute ago, Jay said:

I still don't know if I can say I "liked" the film, but it was certainly more interesting than the usual fair. 

Even if it wasn't for the plot I mentioned above, I'd love it for its atmosphere and looks alone!

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5 minutes ago, AC1 said:

I've never seen Images but I would like to. How's the picture quality? It it an old or new transfer?

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Images-Blu-ray/183439/

 

Quote

Images has been exclusively restored for this release by Arrow FIlms. The film is presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 with mono sound.

The original 35mm camera negative was scanned in 4K resolution on a pin-registered Arriscan. Picture grading was performed on a Da Vinci Resolve. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches, picutre instability and other instances of film wear were repaired or removed through a combination of digital restoration tools and techniques.

There are a couple of instances in which next generation dupe materials were inserted into the cut negative. At these points the quality of the image is reduced and the film grain in elevated to a noticeable level, but we have attempted to make these shots fit in with the surrounding footage as closely as possible.

The original mono soundtrack was restored from the original DME mag reels.

All restoration work was completed at Silver Salt Restoration in London.

All materials for this restoration were made available by HandMade Films via Park Circus Group.

 

Quote

A lot of the film has been intentionally cast in a kind of dewy soft ambience, so that even some close-ups of York (and there are a lot) can be somewhat lacking in fine detail. While some brief problematic moments are probably due to the dupe elements (see screenshot 19 for a likely example), there are actually moments that look like Altman may have had Zsigmond smear Vaseline or something over the lens to increase an almost hallucinatory ambience but which obviously also tends to tamp down at least fine detail levels. The palette is just a trifle on the cool side to my eyes, but looks generally fresh and decently suffused. Aside from the aforementioned occasional spikes in grain, the presentation is commendably organic looking and encounters no undue compression anomalies.

 

I thought it looked great. Very 70s.

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13 hours ago, Jay said:

The Watch movie review & film summary (2012) | Roger Ebert

 

The Watch

 

One of the few mainstream comedy films of the 2010s we had never seen.  It ended up being pretty funny and interesting; Not at all a cliched or by the numbers comedy.  It's really a sci-fi/action/comedy blend kind of like a ghostbusters or men in black or whatever.  As a big fan of The IT Crowd it was great to see Richard Ayoade in something else, and he was very funny here.  Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller were more or less their usual selves, but Jonah Hill was actually not a variant of his usual characters which was nice.  R Lee Ermy, Billy Crudup, Erin Moriarty (from The Boys!), Nicolas Braun (from Succession!), Will Forte, Mel Rodriguez (Last Man On Earth reunion!), and all three Lonely Island guys even show up.  It was all quite fun!

 

It's free on HBO Max

I never got around to this one after it was delayed and renamed. Didn’t realize it was on HBO Max; thanks for the tip!

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7 hours ago, AC1 said:

I've never seen Images but I would like to. How's the picture quality? It it an old or new transfer?

 

I watched it streaming on a service we have in the US called Kanopy, which is free with a library card.  I don't know if they have the same master as was used for the Blu Ray or not, but I'd guess it's probably the same master.  The compression on Kanopy wasn't too bad.  The Blu Ray is supposed to be pretty good by all accounts.  It's not a film that was made with a big budget so it's not like it used expensive film stock or lenses or anything, but it also doesn't remotely look bad.  There's a lot of really nice exterior shots and the interiors look good too.

 

 

7 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

I never got around to this one after it was delayed and renamed. Didn’t realize it was on HBO Max; thanks for the tip!

 

We've been finding tons of great content on HBO Max ever since it launched!  Definitely watch it significantly more than Netflix these days

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The Farewell' Review: A Bittersweet Comedy About Saying One's Goodbye -  Variety

 

The Farewell

 

Wow!  This is one of those movies that didn't immediately leave me with a feeling that I had just seen something special, but as time has gone on (we saw this about a month ago now), I find myself thinking about it more and more.

 

On a filmmaking level, there isn't that much splash or pizazz here; Lulu Wang just kind of gets the job done and that's it.  Maybe a different director could have made things more lively, but since Wang is also the screenwriter and this is all based on her own life experiences, maybe we wouldn't have gotten a film that was quite as honest.


The story is the compelling part here.  Awkwafina is a 30something Chines-American trying to get by in NYC, and finds out that her grandmother back home in China has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and is projected to only have a few months to live.  However the twist is due to their culture, her family (seemingly everyone except Awkwafina herself) wants to hide her diagnosis from the grandmother, letting her think she will be fine and just needs to take some pills.  They say they are doing this so that she can live her final months without fear, and the family can hold the burden of her impending death so she doesn't have to.  It's pretty deep stuff!

 

So, the whole family ends up flying to China to stage a fake wedding between Awkwafina's cousin and a Japanese girl he's only been dating for a few months, as an excuse to get the whole family together before the grandmother passes.  Many different perspectives on their approach to death are all examined as the family prepares for and then goes through the fake wedding.


It's pretty thoughtful stuff, and for probably the only time Awkwafina didn't annoy me (she's not her usually yelly annoying self in this movie, she's very subdued almost the entire time).

 

It's free on Amazon Prime

 

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Keeping up with the Joneses. I skipped this movie three times or even more, I think, but this was the only other alternative today and Black Widow is still unavailable to me (it had better be available tomorrow), so… It’s another 20th Century Fox movie, the characters were introduced rather clumsily, Maribeth Monroe is great and Gal Gadot sounded a bit like Gwyneth Paltrow at first. It is clear to me now, more than ever, that Wonder Woman will not be my cup of tea. And the score is dull and the guys are annoying. Pass.

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23 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

Keeping up with the Joneses. I skipped this movie three times or even more, I think, but this was the only other alternative today and Black Widow is still unavailable to me (it had better be available tomorrow), so… It’s another 20th Century Fox movie, the characters were introduced rather clumsily, Maribeth Monroe is great and Gal Gadot sounded a bit like Gwyneth Paltrow at first. It is clear to me now, more than ever, that Wonder Woman will not be my cup of tea. And the score is dull and the guys are annoying. Pass.

 

Heh, I liked that movie, it's harmless fun. Zach Galifianakis and Isla Fisher were funny and Hamm and Gadot were too actually. And isn't that the one where Patton Oswalt is the bad guy? 

 

The Wonder Woman movies are nothing special though, you can probably find more interesting fair to watch

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On 7/9/2021 at 3:21 PM, Jay said:

The Farewell

 

On a filmmaking level, there isn't that much splash or pizazz here...

 

 

Except, I would say, that it looks quite brilliant. It's packed with shots that display interesting colour schemes across the widescreen canvas.

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I finally just saw Besson'sValerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets.  I enjoyed it.  Not a masterpiece, not even a pretty good film but not awful either.  About as good as other big budget meh movies like Independence Day Resurgence, Godzilla king of the monsters, etc.  Fun movies and not much else.  Better than a transformer movie where stuff just happens to alot of characters, not as good as Avengers movies where there is a lot at stake and you care about what actually happens, but a fun experience overall but far from perfect.  I think it's biggest flaw is you don't really care what happens.  In contrast, 1 minute into the 7 hour Avengers Infinite War movies, the stakes are extremely high and all the characters are complex and unique with a rich back story. Also, I liked the cast, just not the story.  Cara Delevingne is freaking gorgeous and did a great job in this role.  Could have used a more sinister villain and just far better script.  All this could be said of Godzilla King of the Monsters and Independence Day Resurgence which I also enjoyed and also missed the mark.

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Life (2017). Wow. I'm not really sure what made me watch this. I saw a trailer on some other Blu-ray and apparently found it intriguing, liked some of the cast, and the Blu was cheap. Easily the worst thing I've seen in a long time, and as someone with a heartfelt loathing of the genre of scientist action heroes who know nothing about science which doesn't matter because the world they live in doesn't adhere to the laws of nature anyway, I should have seen it coming. It's practically one and a half hours of non-characters bobbing around on ISS, because the makers confused a zero G environment with floating in a water tank. Add awful dialogue and writers who either have no understanding of who science (or expertise of any kind) works. A top quarantine expert who designed the safety protocols of researching an alien life form plus a crew of highly trained astronauts and scientists who start arguing about whether to completely disregard all safety procedures as soon as the alien becomes hostile? No problem. Firing a flame thrower inside the ISS? Sure. It doesn't help that the plot is as unexciting as it is predictable. At one point I figured it must be almost over, only to check the timer and realise that there's still a third of the film to go.

 

The film basically tries to remake Alien, but in a close-to-modern-day, "scientific" (realistic?) environment, being set on the ISS. The thing is, Alien gets away with its crew behaving irresponsibly, irrationally, and impulsively because they're blue collar workers in a distant future where space travel is common place and none of them are even slightly prepared for what they have to deal with. By contrast, Life poses the essentially same situation to a group of highly trained people who have prepared for exactly this kind of scenario and must have had detailed discussions about how to deal with all eventualities. But they still break every safety protocol at the first chance they get, argue about basic rules and safety measures, and never act anything but irrationally and impulsively. Not that there's a lot they could do, because the whole mission has been set up with utterly worthless safety precautions to begin with. But they don't have to rely on science anyway, because Ryan Reynolds can catch a speeding space capsule that would rip the ISS to shreads by simply catching it with the ISS' robotic arm.

 

Aside from not being able to stand that kind of uninformed pseudo-scientific scifi writing, I'm beginning to wonder how symptomatic and/or causative such a thing in big budget productions is for the audience's general understanding and respect for science and real experts (cf eg some of the… less grounded views on how to deal with the COVID pandemic).

 

A couple of nice visuals (mainly at the beginning) is about the only good thing I can say about it. The score sounds like it was written by a composer character created by a writer whose idea of composers and music are about as accurate as those about experts and science.

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35 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Life (2017). Wow. I'm not really sure what made me watch this. I saw a trailer on some other Blu-ray and apparently found it intriguing, liked some of the cast, and the Blu was cheap. Easily the worst thing I've seen in a long time, and as someone with a heartfelt loathing of the genre of scientist action heroes who know nothing about science which doesn't matter because the world they live in doesn't adhere to the laws of nature anyway, I should have seen it coming. It's practically one and a half hours of non-characters bobbing around on ISS, because the makers confused a zero G environment with floating in a water tank. Add awful dialogue and writers who either have no understanding of who science (or expertise of any kind) works. A top quarantine expert who designed the safety protocols of researching an alien life form plus a crew of highly trained astronauts and scientists who start arguing about whether to completely disregard all safety procedures as soon as the alien becomes hostile? No problem. Firing a flame thrower inside the ISS? Sure. It doesn't help that the plot is as unexciting as it is predictable. At one point I figured it must be almost over, only to check the timer and realise that there's still a third of the film to go.

 

The film basically tries to remake Alien, but in a close-to-modern-day, "scientific" (realistic?) environment, being set on the ISS. The thing is, Alien gets away with its crew behaving irresponsibly, irrationally, and impulsively because they're blue collar workers in a distant future where space travel is common place and none of them are even slightly prepared for what they have to deal with. By contrast, Life poses the essentially same situation to a group of highly trained people who have prepared for exactly this kind of scenario and must have had detailed discussions about how to deal with all eventualities. But they still break every safety protocol at the first chance they get, argue about basic rules and safety measures, and never act anything but irrationally and impulsively. Not that there's a lot they could do, because the whole mission has been set up with utterly worthless safety precautions to begin with. But they don't have to rely on science anyway, because Ryan Reynolds can catch a speeding space capsule that would rip the ISS to shreads by simply catching it with the ISS' robotic arm.

 

Aside from not being able to stand that kind of uninformed pseudo-scientific scifi writing, I'm beginning to wonder how symptomatic and/or causative such a thing in big budget productions is for the audience's general understanding and respect for science and real experts (cf eg some of the… less grounded views on how to deal with the COVID pandemic).

 

A couple of nice visuals (mainly at the beginning) is about the only good thing I can say about it. The score sounds like it was written by a composer character created by a writer whose idea of composers and music are about as accurate as those about experts and science.


Stop mincing words. What did you really think?

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Truman show: LiminalSpace

 

The Truman Show

Remarkable piece of work from Peter Weir.  Weir crafts a world and a visual style around Carrey's persona and acting style, with Carrey keeping things just Jim Carrey enough, bringing out a really moving dramatic performance.  The film's visual style befits the story.  It is rooted in a "Hollywood" approach, but just off enough to get the viewer just a bit uneasy.  The story's humor and concept allow it to play out as a great piece of entertainment.  The details and themes allow it to play out as a provoking work of literary art.  It is a send up of the artificiality and control of consumerism.  But also a somber warning about the dangers of control in the name of striving towards utopia.  It is a celebration of the pursuit of life and expresses uncertainty about the afterlife.  It questions the motives and mechanisms of organized religion, while expressing a triumph of a true faith.  It has a happy ending that is undeniably tragic. Christof is not entirely wrong.  The world outside the dome is not more real than the one inside.  Truman has become a true man, because now he must live knowing that reality fully. But kind of man will Truman become exactly?  How can you avoid bitterness and alienation in a world that had you live a false life for their viewing pleasure?  We don't have that answer for sure.  We hope he will still find love and faith things worth living for in the "real" world just as they were for him on his life's stage.  But we don't know.  It is left up for us to answer that in our own lives.

 

4/4

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11 hours ago, SteveMc said:

But kind of man will Truman become exactly?  How can you avoid bitterness and alienation in a world that had you live a false life for their viewing pleasure?  We don't have that answer for sure.  We hope he will still find love and faith things worth living for in the "real" world just as they were for him on his life's stage.  But we don't know.  It is left up for us to answer that in our own lives.

 

Time for a sequel!!1

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20 hours ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

Stop mincing words. What did you really think?

 

A friend said: "Hard to actually see a movie when you're constantly rolling your eyes at it."

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A Quiet Place. I believe I was completely unaware of it until reading an interview with Cillian Murphy that was partly about the sequel recently. He loved it, and apparently everyone else did, so I was quite looking forward to watching it. But it didn't really work for me. It's a good idea, well directed, and well acted (Emily Blunt is always good anyway), but it never managed to actually make me believe its concept - it's just all too unconvincing, and when every new obstacle makes it increasingly more obvious that most character actions are not dictated by logic or character development but simply by plot necessities, that doesn't help to suspend my disbelief either. It seems like every dramatic thing happening in the film could have easily been prevented by the characters being more careful, prepared, and self-controlled - and they are clearly presented as characters who have only survived so long by having learned to excel in all these categories. The result is that I don't believe the stakes, or the drama. As I said, it's well directed, and at least the nail in the stairs suspense subplot worked brilliantly (I probably moaned louder than Blunt's character when she stepped on it). But at the same time it's just another case that's not believable - why wouldn't she remove the nail right when she discovers it? After stepping on it, if she really didn't get a chance to remove it herself, I don't believe someone as careful and aware of danger as her would forget to mention it as soon as her husband is back, or at least later when they're going down the same stairs… Or if they removed it (although I'm pretty sure there was a foreboding shot of the nail even after that sequence), it wasn't shown, and I would count that as a continuity error (or an editing lie by omission). In any case, my greatest suspense factor for the rest of the film was that I was convinced someone else was going to step on it. As for the score, Beltrami (somehow it was obvious from the first opening droning note that this would be a Beltrami score - I guess it's just his kind of film) gets one or two moments where he was either inspired, or willing, or allowed to do something vaguely more inspired than generic MV drone noodling, but for the most part, I couldn't say there was even one different note between this score and the bulk of yesterday's Life.

 

Ultimately, an inspired idea, but a not so inspired realisation that only once or twice manages to temporarily overcome its own shortcomings. As far as I remember, 2016's Don't Breathe was more successful in implementing a very similar idea, even if it was (perhaps intentionally) more generic by design.

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Sense and Sensibility. 

 

I shall not endeavour to pen my thoughts about this film in the occasionally stilted language that Jane Austen employs and which did not always come across as genuine… Would you excuse me, I think I shall. Indeed, I must, now that I have found a thesaurus which will hopefully facilitate the task at hand. Dear me, I cannot believe how well this is going. Oh, splendid!

Well, the same can be said about the events I have just been so fortunate to witness on the big screen. All the actors are quite accomplished and it was highly amusing to hear Kate Winslet utter the phrase, ‘Do you love him?’ Colonel Brandon does not have the brightest of minds, however, and fails again and again to realise that Marianne has clearly transferred all her affections to Willoughby until the very end of the narrative. That particular plot point is handled rather clumsily (and how did he find their abode of residence in London so easily?) The running time was a revelation too as I had first experienced this tale in bits and pieces during a few days of well-deserved rest in Kent. Back then, it seemed to be at least four hours.

I continue to esteem and admire the musical escapades of Patrick Doyle as well, although I feel compelled to point out that the piano Brandon so kindly bestows upon the Dashwoods does not sound like a pianoforte at all and I seem to recall quite clearly that the modern piano had not been invented at that point in time.

I say, I am astonished at how fruitful this linguistic experiment has turned out to be! It is, however, a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good computer must hate it when the file he obtained using questionable methods fails to contain the final two minutes of the chronicle.
 

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Wonder Woman 1984. Call me crazy but I quite liked it. It is bit silly and the pacing is on the slow side but I definitely didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. Perhaps it's low expectations but definitely not a disaster and better than the first one. 

 

Karol

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I did not like the first movie at all. I get what they were going for but having WWI as a backdrop somehow made the central story feel somehow embarrassing and even inappropriate. But because the second film doesn't do that I wasn't bothered. Yes, it's silly and cheesy. And overlong. But I could at least relate to something. And the score was really great in context. I hope we get the expansion one day. 

 

Karol

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