CP3S

I wonder if there's much of anything Dur enjoys. Poor Dur.

;)

Whoa! That is really cool. I've never seen TAS, but after you said the Kzinti weren't specifically created for Star Trek to begin with, I looked it up. I think it is really cool Larry Niven wrote an episode of TAS and crossed over a species from his own sci-fi stories.

Leonardo said:

I see your winky, but I'm keeping my serious hat on this time, so pardon me if I sound stubborn (well, I am).

Isn't this view of culture kinda... I dunno, outdated, for lack of a better term? Nowadays culture is global. Stuff goes on the internet, everybody sees it. I think one should be prepared for that.

No, I mostly agree with you. It is kind of lazy. Sounds like they made an effort, but an extremely minimal one. But, even if everything is global now, they are appealing to an American audience. It is the American Cartoon Network that is paying for the show. And even the Italian speakers who are watching the show via venues where the money gets back to the creators, how many of them are going to say, "You know what, they couldn't bother to get their Italian right for this minute and a half segment of one episode so I am finished!" In other words, what is really at stake for them by not going the extra mile for their Italian viewers?

However, culture being global? How so? Just because everyone around the world buys up and enjoys silly American entertainment, doesn't mean it needs to cater to a worldwide audience. You're a really well informed guy, very intelligent, and clearly very well educated. You're English puts a lot of first English speakers that post on this forum to shame. Hell, your English probably puts my English to shame, but I am sure there are still plenty of Robot Chicken jokes that go over your head, and probably much more so for the general Italian population. It's made by guys who grew up in the eighties and nineties, and most of the jokes are pop culture jokes relating to that era and appealing to guys in that age range. Some of the stuff they reference I feel like I am even too young to get, some of the shows they pull jokes from came on when I was just a little too young to have appreciated them. It is the stuff my slightly older cousins were really into.

I really appreciate that about the show. These guys are sticking to the stuff they know and the stuff they are/were into or grew up around, and making jokes and references aimed at their generation.

TV's Frink said:

By books, do you mean comic books?

Yes, sir.

And if you are not a comic book reading kind of guy, neither am I, but I still really enjoy them. They are the only comic books I've read since my preteen years, other than a few outstanding graphic novels like Watchmen or V for Vendetta.

I guess I should be more clear that I mean the comic books, since there is a series of novels now.

twister111 said:

Re: Walking Dead
I feel they shot themselves in the foot with the season 3 ending in that it pretty much wraps up the series. Seriously aside from 1 plot point in regards to 1 person everything is wrapped up. It's like how I felt after the 4th episode of the 4th series of Misfits. There's nothing cliffhanger-esque enough for me to feel like I would have to watch the next episode.

Really? I thought the way season three ended almost felt like it was cut off mid episode. It was pretty anti-climactic, and nothing from the season was resolved. In the comics, the events of the season three finale are a pretty big game changer moment in the series.

I wonder how close they'll follow the books following the wrapping up of the prison storyline. The nomadic nature of the next several storylines doesn't seem very conducive to television. With the way it is going, I half expect them to drag the governor stuff on until the end of season four, then end it there. Or choosing to stray in a completely different direction than the comics all together. Just about everything that happens following the prison prior to making it to the Alexandria Safe-Zone is a bit too extreme even for AMC anyway. I also wouldn't be surprised if they skip straight to the Alexandria Safe-Zone from the prison.

One thing I love about season one, is the ending is almost an adequate end to the series anyway. There are plenty of loose threads, but watching the survivors pile into the Winnebago and drive off into the distance after learning that the world is entirely screwed and no cure is on the way, was a pretty great ending. Given the mess that seasons two and three are, that is always going to be my end to the series.

ray_afraid said:

TV's Frink said:

Man, you guys aren't exactly encouraging me to start watching WDs2.

Hey, you catch on pretty quick! ; )

Unless you have a thing for hour long episodes of people repeatin' the same conversations they had in the last episode (and the next. and the next. and so on.) and a plot that refuses to move, you'd be better off not returning to TWD.

Seconded. Total waste of time with little pay off. Read the books. They're a lot a fun, and hold no punches. Good character driven storytelling, and can sometimes even be a bit thought provoking. Short easy reads you can pick up and put down easily. I've read plenty of them on my phone while waiting for oil changes, in waiting rooms, or even while using "the facilities".

From the beginning through the the end of the prison storyline (issue 48) was definitely some of the best stuff, but a lot of my favorite twists and turns took place after the prison, like the stuff with the twins, and Carl becoming increasingly more of a badass.

Awww, that brought happy tears to my eyes.

Warbler said:

generalfrevious said:

 Its become too competitive nowadays for a film like Easy Rider or Midnight Cowboy to revitalize the industry because no one in Hollywood can't take risks anymore.

I know,  I'd like to see someone take the risk of making a black and white 4:3 silent movie.   But you can't take that risk.   Oh wait . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Artist_%28film%29

 

I agree with Warbler. I think the state of modern films isn't as dire as a lot of people make it out to be.

I'm willing to bet there have been more great films made in the last ten years than any ten year period prior. I think your perception is made by a variety of factors, one of which is you know Citizen Kane of 1941, because it was a great film, but all those crappy films of 1941 are long forgotten. You remember the Godfather of 1972, but the mediocre to crappy films of 1972 have been forgotten. It is easy to go back and watch every memorable film of previous decades and think, Wow, movies were so much better back then! You don't take into account all those B movies and serials that kids used to go see on Saturdays for one weekend only before being shipped off to the next theater, or films that weren't as well made, or simply just didn't resonate like Citizen Kane did.

Those have essentially been replaced with comic book movies and dumb action blockbusters. Which brings us to another factor in the perception of movies having gone to shit. More of these types of films are made, because they are so marketable, they appeal to a wide audience, bring in droves of movie goers, and sell scores of toys and merchandise. But you still have guys out there like Danny Boyle, Darren Aronofsky, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Wes Anderson, the Coen brothers, Guillermo del Toro, to name just a very small number off the top of my head, who are still out there making meaningful, well written and preformed films.

I used to belong to the, We're all doomed! Film isn't what it use to be! camp, but after taking a step back and looking around, I don't feel like there is really much to complain about. I have more highly acclaimed films I think I will probably really like on my to-watch-list than I have time to watch, with more inevitably on the way. There are still so many good movies out there. It wasn't like in the 1940's you could walk into a cinema any day of the year and see a Citizen Kane or Casablanca. We're in the same boat we've always been in, only now film making is more prolific than ever, and inevitably, there is going to be a lot of chaff to sift through. Whether or not you should avoid a movie is a no brainer. It isn't like you go to see a film like Iron Man 3, The Hangover 7, or The Bourne Identity 5 expecting to see some cinematic masterpiece, and if you are, there is your problem right there. 

Here an exercise for you, take an actor you really love from that "golden age of Hollywood", find as many films staring them as you can from their most popular period and have yourself a marathon. I'll use Bogart as an example, because he was pretty awesome IMHO, you'll find he plays the same damn role over and over again, sometimes in some pretty mediocre to awful films. The small handful of films he is in that pretty much everyone has heard of, you'll find to be his best, which is why pretty much everyone had heard of them. Those ones you've never heard of are going to be hit or miss, and more often miss.

Gaffer, can I be your Imagination Prince?

Leonardo said:

What I hear in the video is so far off from what they're supposed to say it's distracting. But hey, as long as it sounds foreign!... don't need to do actual research!
The voices are good, they're in tune and operatic, the music sounds decent, why not go the extra centimeter and get someone competent to translate them properly??? These things piss me off!! 

Well, you're not suppose to actually know Italian, silly.

It's made by monolingual Americans for monolingual American. 

Get off our land entertainment! ;)

TV's Frink said:

I have not been able to get into Robot Chicken no matter how hard I try.

What? Each episode is just a series of memes and pop culture jokes, mostly from the 80's and 90's. It seems like it would be just your thing.

I really dislike Family Guy, but I love Robot Chicken.

Wait-a-minute! Are you saying all Klingons are weirdos? Because that sounds a little bit alien racist.

AntcuFaalb said:

SilverWook said:

Who's dead in pics three and four?

3=beats me!

4=little kid?

In three, it is the one sitting in the awkward position of course. Ever try to stand up a dead person? It doesn't work so well. Once rigor mortis kicks in, there is no balancing them, and before that they are like a rag doll. Different parts of the body weight different amounts, and the stagnant fluids are not evenly distributed. 

And for four, it is the little kid on the horse. That picture is the creepiest of the lot.

The thing that has been ruining movies for me lately are those damn ushers with their glow sticks.

It is hard not to be distracted from the movie by some bulky 300lb. cinema employee clunking up and down the aisles while waving a glowing blue rod around.

I think this policy was adopted by theaters in the US after The Dark Night Rises shooting. I've don't recall ever seeing them do that sort of thing prior to the later half of last year. They do it several times per movie. So very distracting.

Ronster said:

Rustlers in the cinema are a deal breaker they make the ticket price worthless and ruin the experience.

Rustling should be banned... And packaging should be altered for cinemas so it does not make noise.. People should also be strip searched and have items that can make rustling noises confiscated and then returned after the movie.

I've never experienced the problem with "rustlers" but it sounds really annoying. In the states nothing you can buy in the cinema makes rustling, and you're not allowed to take food in, so anything big and bulky like even a small bag of crisps would be pretty noticeable unless smuggled in a handbag.

As for searches and temporary confiscations... No thanks! If they take my flask away, how am I going to be able to make it all the way through that crappy movie I just paid to see?

Then if it is a busy performance and you need to adhere to seating numbers your bound to have to sit behind a 7ft hulk of a man or some woman with a massive hair do...

I'm 6' 2 and have often had pity on the short person sitting behind me in crowded showings and chosen to spend the duration of the movie slumped in my seat. So many frustrating memories of being a kid, getting the perfect seat in a movie I have been looking forward to seeing, then feeling my heart sink as some tall person sits directly in front of me and makes the whole event a chore of constantly dodging their head to see what is going on in the middle of the screen.

Fortunately, stadium style seating has become the norm and makes a big difference.

Oh yeah, and thanks for all the creepy pictures of dead kids, Dur. We all needed that.

ray_afraid said:

CP3S said:

ray_afraid said:

^I'm with ya! The show is lame (well, I did dig the first season), but I love the comics!

I enjoyed season one as well. You'd think Kirkman's involvement on season two would have improved it, but it was awful. I wonder if Frank Darabont would have been involved in seasons two and three if they would have turned out better?

I really think Darabont was a key to the first seasons success... But I'm a bit biased as I'm a fan.

Darabont has done some pretty great stuff, and was a perfect fit for bringing The Walking Dead to life. It is a shame they sacked him.

But hey, AMC learned their lesson: Why keep a guy with great creative vision around who is going to make a fuss about silly things like budget cuts, and creating a quality production when all you have to do is produce a mediocre show and flash Norman Reedus on the screen a couple of times per episode to keep the ratings high.

I think Kirkman made something really great with The Walking Dead, but for the last couple of years it has really done a lot of meandering, which is entirely unwelcome when you have to wait a month between stories that only take you ten minutes to read. The events at Hershals farm only filled a small handful of issues. I am pretty sure it filled less than five issues, but I don't remember for sure. Yet a lot of stuff happened during that time. The prison was a longer story, but it kept moving and interesting things kept happening. For the last while in the book, nothing significant or that exciting has taken place. I feel like the Negan storyline isn't going anywhere (I'm still five issues behind, so maybe it has, but I am not holding my breath). Which is pretty much the state of the tv show. Nothing ever happens. It is so slow moving, meandering, and boring. There are so many interesting ideas to explore, so many characters to learn more about, so many events that could happen. Instead we drag the Governor on for another season.

Hopefully people will get tired of gawking at Reedus, rating will drop, the show will get cancelled, and Kirkman will refocus his attention on the book and it will start heading back to its former glory.

ray_afraid said:

^I'm with ya! The show is lame (well, I did dig the first season), but I love the comics!

I enjoyed season one as well. You'd think Kirkman's involvement on season two would have improved it, but it was awful. I wonder if Frank Darabont would have been involved in seasons two and three if they would have turned out better?

I read the books month-to-month, but decided to hold off for a few months so I'd have several unread issues to read through at once. As of yesterday (issue 112 came out), I now have five unread issues and don't think I can hold off any longer. That is almost a half a year of self control, haven't read it since February, and it'll probably take only about an hour to read all of those.

It seems like it is almost impossible to find fans of The Walking Dead. I know there are thousands out there, but where do I find them? And no, I don't mean the AMC series, everybody watches that and loves it for some reason. I've gotten to the point where I can't stand it. Every Walking Dead fan site on the web seems entirely focused on the TV show. Surely there is some community of Walking Dead fans out there who loved the series before the TV show hit and find the TV show to be as mediocre as I do.

As far as the comic goes, beyond basic information and plot synopsis, I can't seem to find anything relating to it, no forums full of thoughts, ideas, and speculation, everything seems to be about the TV show and the apparent dreaminess of Daryl Dixon*.

As exciting as it was when it was first announced, the TV show is one of those things I wish never happened. Your typical "Walking Dead fan" now seems to be obese women in their early thirties with pictures of Norman Reedus pasted around their homes. I also feel like the quality of the comic has taken a dive since Kirkman took over as the show runner for TWD. Like so many things that become popular, TWD TV show has brought with it a lot of baggage that makes the whole thing suck. 

*In my experience, for some reason fans of the show seem to think it is a direct spot on adaption of the comic series. On no less than three occasions has some minor acquaintance discovered that I read TWD and immediately after letting out some over-the-top gasp blurted out something along the lines of, "Don't you even tell me what eventually happens to Daryl, because I don't even want to know!" or "Daryl better still be alive!" or some other comment or questions about Daryl. Seriously. This has happened on three separate occasions. When they hear that Daryl isn't in the comics, the usual response is a bewildered, "WHAT!?!? The best character isn't even in the comics?"

Daryl doesn't even really do anything on the show! None of the TV show characters do. Everybody just adores Daryl for his looks. It is pretty lame.

Ryan McAvoy said:

So many things logicaly wrong with the Naboo Starfighter and the hanger. Like it is physicaly impossible for them to land back into those gaps down the side, but of course it is also impossible for them to land full stop.

But the design is so godamn beautiful that I don't care. Call me crazy but I'd have one of those over an X-Wing anyday.

Who's to say they have to land in those alcoves? Maybe they just land in the hanger and some machine puts them back in their spots for storage. Naboo is depicted as a peaceful planet that doesn't do a lot of fighting.

In 1999 I had already outgrown playing with action figures, but I still found myself going out and adding the Naboo fighter to my collection. It is the only Episode I related toy I bought.

Hard Candy (2005)

I've heard a lot about this movie, mostly negative things, but it seemed intriguing. Watching Super, which featured Ellen Page, last night reminded me I had been meaning to watch this.

Over all, it was a pretty worthless movie, though perhaps an interesting psychological experiment: Do you feel sympathy for the man undergoing torture even after child pornography and a photo of the missing girl are found in his possession? Or do you gleefully root for the crazy teenager and the sick things she is doing to this man?

Overall, I am glad I watched it, though I will probably never watch it again.

1 out of 4 boxes of girl scout cookies

Dark City Director's Cut (1998)

Picked this up on a buy 1 get 2 free blu-ray sale a few months ago. Had never seen any version of the film before. Perhaps if I had seen this back in 1998, I would have thought a lot more of it, but for me it fell kind of flat. It had an engaging story, pretty visuals, and Jennifer Connelly. Yet somehow overall it did not manage to pull me in or make me really care much about what was happening.

2 out of 4 hot wives you were never really married to

In 2010 I came home from work one day, my girlfriend grabbed my arm and told me I was taking her to see Kick-Ass. She had a pretty high gravity job, went through moods, and at times it was hard to talk her into going out for anything other than alcohol. I don't remember much of the movie, but I remember we had fun that evening. She definitely seemed to enjoy the movie more than I did, and it was nice to see her have a good time. 

Super (2010)

A few months after the theatrical release of Kick-Ass, Super premiered at the Toronto film festival, then several months later, now a whole year after Kick-Ass, it saw theatrical release. Kick-Ass is the film I saw in theaters, and Super is the film I wish I had bothered to see in theaters. The two films appear very similar in style, marketing, and content, but when in comes down to it, silly costumes and over the top violence are the only things they have in common. It was hard to watch the trailers for Super without thinking Didn't I just pay to go see a movie just like that a few months ago?

Super isn't even a hero movie, it is more about a guy who has been constantly screwed over his whole life going on a killing spree with the somewhat honorable goal of rescuing his runaway junkie wife, and just happens to chose the guise of a super hero to don while doing so. It is a really dark movie, but yet somehow really funny. Starring Rainn Wilson, I expected it to be more straight up silly comedy, than the darker more serious story it actually told.

3 out of 4 blood spattered pipe wrenches.

Johnny Ringo said:

It [Red Dwarf] will NEVER be what it once was...

For sure. There is no way.

But series 10 is far better than 9 / Back to Earth. I really didn't like 9 at all but I've watched a few episodes from 10 more than once. That said, there are still some dull moments.

Anyone seen the Brittas empire? [another Chris Barrie show] - been catching eps on youtube. Used to watch it wayyyy back.

I didn't even find Back to Earth slightly enjoyable or entertaining. I'll check out series ten then, only six episodes, not a super huge time investment.

Yeah, the Brittas Empire is kind of fun, I've seen all the later series and the conclusion, but somehow I've never managed to see the earlier episodes. It is kind of surprising how little Chris Barrie is in, considering how well known he is. Red Dwarf and The Brittas Empire are the only two shows he's stared in, and somehow he ended up being Laura Croft's butler in those crappy Tomb Raider films.

 re: life on Mars - I've been meaning to check it out but never really got around to it yet. It comes highly recommended by a few friends.

Lately I've been watching a mix of stuff, The only thing I've really been keeping up to speed on is The Venture Bros. I love that show...maybe too much.

Life on Mars is a show I tell a lot of people they should watch, and maybe only two or three that I know of have done so. It just doesn't look that interesting. The box art on my BD sets make it look incredibly dull. It is a hard show to make look interesting with still images, and the plot sounds painfully silly when described out loud. However, watch the first episode or two, and it is hard to deny that the show is something special.

I love Venture Bros. too, one of my favorites. It is good to have it back. I'm several episodes behind at the moment so that I can enjoy a few in a clump when the mood strikes.

Hey, it's me. said:

Warbler said:

yeah, it does need to be considered that maybe the Paula Dean that said that 30 years ago has changed.   Even racists can have a change of heart.    Of course she also said she had wanted a plantation style wedding, with black people as servants.    That is not good.

That's a bad faux pas on her part. Shit, what WAS she thinking saying that? Oh boy

Maybe she is just a racist?

Ronster said:

What's all this Ditto nonsense?

Same!