DrCrowTStarwars

Here is what you need to understand is once in a while even with my favorite shows and movies I will become fixated on some character moment or plot detail that doesn't bother anyone else but it will bug me because that is how my brain works and it is the sort of thing I think about and rewrite when I am writing. I will then devote a lot of thought to why this one part didn't work for me and how to fix it because that is how my mind works.  It doesn't mean I hate the show or movie or the people behind it, I have done this to Robert Holmes scripts and he is my favorite writer on my favorite show show.

Also I do find it funny that this show that is about how hard it is for a woman to make it in a man's world and that goes over the top some times to show is made in Hollywood a city where woman have an insanely hard time making it as anything put sex pots. Comes from a mostly male production staff, and from Marvel a company that has very few woman in positions of power.  I don't know if I wanted to produce a show where a female lead has a hard time making it in a man's world I think I may hire a few woman to work as writers and producers on the show, but that is just me.  Maybe I am just a bad person and I am sexist and I don't see it but I just find it funny that this show that is preaching about how men keep woman down is being made by a city and a company that keeps woman down, but I guess I am the only one who sees it that way so I will drop the issue now.

Oh and I don't hate the series either.  I have problems with it when it comes to suspense and the way it is written in certain scenes but I don't hate it.

I am still recording every episode and making my own Blurays of it complete with animate menus, chapter breaks, and extras.

Hardly the actions of someone who hates a series for having a female lead I would say.

How is this mysoginistic?  I just think of female characters no differently then I think of male characters. I also believe the actions of female characters can be questioned the same as male characters, if a male character had done this to a female character I would be saying the exact some thing.  I just don't believe that woman should get a free pass, that is all.  I have said that other then that scene she is well written and I have praised the actress who played her.  Some of my favorite female characters of all time are Leigh from Assault on precinct 13, Sarah Jane Smith from Doctor Who, and Dellenn from Babylon 5 to name just a few. Now I do look at all characters through the same moral lens and don't take their gender or race into account, I judge them all as people and some times I find badly written scenes for all characters including female ones. I have said the guy was a bastard but I think there is a difference between being a bastard who can be handled in any number of ways and being someone who needs to be murdered in the middle of a diner. Now if that makes me a mysoginist then I am a proud misoginist. 

I don't know why I bothered typing all that out, if you had read my last post you would already know this and you would see that I at least put enough thought into this issue to come up with how I would have rewritten it and you would know this if you had read my posts so clearly you are acting me for daring to question the actions of a female character, instead of the content of my posts so there is no point in my arguing with you since you will not read anything I type.

I will instead of just type out what you will read any way.

I am an evil woman hater who beats them to death and then chops them up and leaves the body parts on the side of the road and the police need to put a bullet in my head and you should put me on ignore.

I will be ignoring you from now on and you should do the same so you don't have to read any more of my evil woman hating posts.

How is complaining that things are no longer shot on film(Something that was extremely bulky and expensive)not you complaining that things were better in the old days? The way the sets are set up, how they are lit, and the look of the actors effects what the movie looks like just as much as if it is shot on film or not. How is my complaint any different then your's?  We are both complaining about how the look of modern films and Tv shows takes us out of the story and calls attention to the fakeness of the setting. 

Yes you can find some grit in Rated level stuff my complaint is more about overall tone and the fact that outside of a few gritty cable dramas there is no attempt to place the characters in anything that looks like the real world and that draws me out of everything else.  It use to be that most shows and movies tried to have some form off realism and I just don't see that any more, in the way things are shot or the type of casting that is done.

If I can say one thing in favor of Marvel it's that Agent Caulson and Agent Carter look more like real people then anyone I have seen in non cable series in a long time. I can believe they could duck into a crowd and hide, so they did a good job there.

Tobar said:

Tales of Suspense #39

I'm surprised that the Iron Man movie pretty much followed this beat for beat at the beginning. Been really enjoying making my way through the early Marvel issues and especially reading the contemporary readers' reactions to them.

 Yeah when I saw Iron Man I was surprised by that fact too, considering all the changes that were made to Spider-Man and The X men.

Oh and if you want a good laugh look up the episode of Atop the Fourth Wall where Linkara reads this issue and does all of Tony's dialog in a drunk voice.  It puts Stan Lee's iffy transistors science in a whole new light:)

Okay one last thing about that scene in Agent Carter and then I will shut up about it because after all it was only one scene I think if it had not ended the pilot episode it wouldn't have left such an impression on me.  I came up with three solutions that would have made that scene work for me, the first two would allow her to do exactly what she did in the show without coming off as unhinged and the last one would show her using her brains and skills as a secret agent to put the smug bastard in his place.

First that could have made the guy a cop or someone who was connected to say the mayor's office or something to make it clear that reporting what he did was not an option.  Second they could have showed the waitress trying to report what he did and the lazy cops not doing a thing to make it clear this was a situation where there were no other options.

Third earlier in the episode have Carter use a spy camera to take pictures of what the guy was doing and maybe use a mini tape recorder to tape the audio of what he had done and then have her go up to the jerk and have her ask him what his wife would make of those.  Remember back then Divorce was a huge scandal so he would lost standing in the community as well as money so it is highly unlikely he would ever come back there and with the photos in Carter's hands she would have a constant thread that would make sure he never came back.

Any way that is my two cents and I am done with that scene.  Sorry if I upset anyone, that was not my intent.

Mrebo said:

I agree, it's not that every or even most entertainment should be dirty, gritty, dark, etc, but that there is a tendency to avoid imperfection. Where is the break-down happening? Are modern tastes simply oriented to superficially perfect fluff?

Perhaps on a related matter, the NYT had an article about the decline of quotable lines from movies. I'm not sure this is true and meaningful or not.

 Yeah exactly, it isn't darkness I am looking for it's the type of lived in detail that you see in the real world so you can relate to it.  I mean you can get whole stories out of someone having trouble paying their bills, or for instance needing to find someone to watch their kid or something like that but these types of stories are completely passed up.  You don't even have to focus on these details for stories just have them in the background of the set, or have them mentioned in passing and have your actors not be perfect pretty people and that will be enough for me.  Right now I am completely draw out of modern Tv shows and movies and have real trouble getting caught up in them because I don't believe that the world or the people in it are real.

Again it isn't dark content, The Marry Taylor Moore show isn't dark to say the least but I still believe she is a real person and I can relate to her because her life isn't perfect and she doesn't seem to have magic money that never runs out.  That is the level of real world detail I am looking for in my Tv shows and movies.  They can still be light and fluffy without taking place in magic land.

Oh and yeah the ratings system is completely messed up, I few years before I was born The Shining was an R rated movie, now it feels PG except for the one nude scene.  Patriot Games was rated R when I was a kid but now adays you will find more sexual content in an episode of The Big Bang theory and that airs in what used to be called the family hour with a TVPG rating, and as for violence well now adays the average TVPG rated episode of something like Castle or CSI is way more violent then that movie was. 

The PG13 rating is a joke, as long as it's an action movie you can get away with dropping the FBomb, having sex scenes, and showing people getting their heads hacked off complete with blood gushing everywhere.  This sort of thing was limited to R rated slasher films when I was kid, but now adays if it's an action movie that makes it fine for kids to watch.  However if a drama like the King's Speech doesn't have any sex or violence and all it does is drop the FBomb a few times, that movie gets hit with an R rating because we can't have kids exposed to that. Unless it Judi Dench saying it right after James Bond has killed a bunch of people then it is fine.

Do I want censorship?  Far from it I am just saying that the rating system is clearly broken and gamed to make sure all action movies are huge hits now regardless of content so I have lost all respect for the rating system and no longer pay attention to it.  The last straw for me was in fact The King's Speech, I bought it on Bluray based on the good reviews but then because of family maters I waited two weeks to watch it because I wasn't about to watch an R Rated movie while keeping an Eye on my little brother and sister and then I put it in and saw that apart from two scenes where the FBomb appears it was the sort of drama film that would have been made in the 40s, and yet somehow it was given an R????  My little brother and sister know not to say that word, so I could have watched it any time in the passed two weeks if I had known.  Then two years later I saw Skyfall in theaters and they were allowed to drop that same bomb and only got hit with a PG13, that was it for me and I have not paid attention to the ratings of films since then.  The whole system is broken and stupid and I just preview films now and then decide if I can watch them with my little brother and sister up.  It used to be that even though I didn't agree with some ratings the MPAA handed out I could at least use them as something of a guideline that would give me some idea of a movie's content before I saw it, those days are gone so I don't pay attention to the ratings any more.

Oh and since then I have watched The King's Speech at least half a dozen times with my little brother and sister up and they have never used the F word in their lives.  Talk about a useless system.

So you are telling me it is okay to murder someone for that?  If someone killed a man in a dinner for doing that you would be fine with the police not arresting anyone?

If she is being harassed there are laws to protect her, call the cops on the asshole. This is not the middle of nowhere and letting people solve their personal problems with violence is exactly how we end up with drive byes in the streets.

Also I wonder if anyone would be cheering if the genders had been reversed?  I have worked service jobs all of my life and I know some people will find this hard to believe given my picture but I have been harassed to the point of having woman and in one case a gay man slap my butt and I never once thought about killing them or threatening their lives. Is that really what i should have done and if I had done that to a woman would you be okay with that?  The problem isn't so much what they wrote as the setting they put it in. Normally when the hero does something like that it is in some lawless area like a frontier town where they are the only protection for a whole group of people. Here it was not the case to it just came of as the actions of someone with massive rage issues.  Not only that but I am not convinced that this would have fixed the problem. If the man really is an abuser to the point where this action is required I have seen what happens next in these type of situations in real life and she didn't solve the problem, all she did was embarrass him and make him mad and that just increases the odds that he will either get violent with her friend(Since Carter can't be there 24/7 to protect her)or he decides to get revenge by going to the police and showing them the marks she would have left on his skin and saying that they were both in on it and then her friend not only gets fired but may end up in jail.

In other words either the actions were not warranted or if they were they would have only made the situation worse. Either outcome does not make Carter look good and since it didn't seem to set up any sort of character or plot arc I am just going to put it down to bad writing.  The character was written well in the rest of the show, but this one scene just really didn't work.

Now that is lucky.  Where I live we only really get in four stations and luckily one of them is METV so I get to see all kinds of awesome shows, some that I saw a few episodes of in the past and others that are all new to me.  Plus I get a daily dose of Rockford Files and Perry Mason.  i can't ask for much more then that:)

Yeah I hear you I have been on a real 70s kick lately with films and METV(A network that does nothing but broadcast old TV shows over the air)has added a ton of 70s shows to their line up lately and the one thing I noticed was that even the family sitcoms looked more real and had a level of grit to them that isn't present in today's dramas.

What is more I think today's Tv shows and movies are missing a trick because when everyone is pretty and perfect they all look the same. Back in the day an actor's face could draw you in because every line on it could have a story to tell and the viewer would want to know that story.

Oh and as for aspiring to be like the people on Tv these days I think all they are doing is depressing people. At least in the old days on shows like Hill Street blues and Cheers they would show how hard it was being a single parent so if you were watching and you had those problems you wouldn't feel bad about yourself.  Now adays every parent has time for their kids, makes a huge amount of money, and has a house that is magically clean. It creates this image that if you don't have this life that there is no way to get in the real world then you are a bad person. So not only is it unrelatable but it is depressing.

Also modern clean sets call attention to the fact that they are sets, the homes and locations don't looked lived in, there are no dark patches on the walls and now piles of laundry being worked on so I don't buy the locations as places where people live and it hurts my ability to believe in the world the show takes place in.

Oh and don't even get me started on the number of shows that feature people who work at a desk all day and live off of take out and yet are in perfect shape, I don't believe these perfect looking people are who the show is telling me they are for a moment.  What ever happened to Sipowitz being our image of what a man would look like after twenty years spent mostly at a desk typing.  Oh and don't even get me started on female cast members who are getting so thin they are unatractive and look like they could give you a paper cut and then they insult as by asking us to believe that they live off of a diet of donuts and burgers. How am I supposed to believe anything in this world is real, and if I don't believe in the world why should I be invested in the outcome of the story.

I am sorry maybe I am just an old fart ranting, but I really think a lot of modern Tv shows and movies that could be good are shooting themselves in the foot by making the worlds look ultra fake and giving us interchangible casts of pretty people that we can not relate to or believe in as people.

I am getting sick of the lack of grit in modern Hollywood. I mean it's not just here it is in everything and it takes me right out of the story because I can't relate to these people. Not matter what the setting is or how average or poor the characters are supposed to be the leads now always have perfect teeth and hair, wear designer clothes, have a huge house, they are always in perfect shape even if the character is supposed to work 24/7 and do nothing but eat out, and their houses are always perfectly clean and there is never so much as a dirty dish to be seen anywhere. it doesn't matter if the character is shipwreck, a cop in a bad neighborhood, or from a future where the world has fallen apart all of these things hold true.

Maybe I am alone in this but I miss the 70s when movies and tv had realistic grit to them and they cast people who didn't look perfect and they had people leading realistic lifestyles, whatever happened to that. I mean what happened to our heroes being people like Jim Rockford or Marry Taylor Moore, people who had to make do and live in something that resembled the real world and we could relate to. I am sorry this turned into such a long rant but in the past decade or some I am finding it harder and harder to relate to characters or the worlds they live in when it comes to Hollywood movies and TV shows. Am I alone in this?

Okay after rewatching it I am liking the pilot a little better, and there are a lot of good points to this series one of the biggest being the lead, she feels like someone out of the 1940s.

Still I think there are a few writing problems, such as that one scene that feels like something from the beginning of a film about a serial killer. I still think that scene just make Cater look disturbed.  The other big problem is not a problem with the series so much as a problem I personally have with prequels in general and that is the lack of suspense. I mean it even extends to little thing like the scenes between Carter and Jarvis, normally there would be a bit of will they or wouldn't they tension but since we know who she marries thanks to CA2, well even that little bit of fun is taken away.  I am not trying to complain or single this series out in fact this is more of a general complaint and one reason I can't figure out why prequels are so popular these days, since we know exactly how things will turn out there is no tension.  Now add to that the fact that the way Network Tv is made tends to drain tension from the narrative any way by making it pretty easy to tell what is going to happen and you have a real problem when it comes to engaging me and keeping me on the edge of my seat.  Maybe I am just too nitpicky and expecting too much because everyone else seems to love this show.  Still for me it's just decent tv, not must see TV.

Still if that doesn't bother you I say watch it and you will enjoy it.

Oh one minor nitpick. How do people not know who Carter is, I mean there is newsreel footage of the First Superhero looking at her picture in his watch and hundred of people must have seen her get into that action scene with Captain America in the middle of New York.  I am sorry I know this is a stupid thing to think about but I find it hard to believe the press wouldn't have been snooping all around to find out who this woman is.  Then again i don't really buy that her room mate didn't find any of her stuff when he just seems to be sitting in the closet.  Still that is just me, I really don't want to put this series down because it's clear that the makers are trying.  i guess prequels just don't work for me:(

Oh and I saw the preview of Ant-Man and I now know why Edger Wright left.  It's because the studio decided to remove all personality and humor from a concept that only works if it has a sense of humor about it's self and turn it into a generic Batman clone.  This could have been a fun movie but now it's being played as completely dark melodrama without a hint of humor or lightness, as if this is the most serious thing ever put to film.  They have decided to go ultra dark and make their grimiest picture yet out of Ant-Man. I'm sorry but for me you can't go all dark and brooding when you are showing a man riding a fly, it just doesn't work and I bust out laughing.  It looks like a joyless slog that will just be repeating the beat of both The Dark Knight and Green lantern.  I think I will pass. This movie doesn't even look worth the dollar it would cost to rent it from redbox. Marvel could have had a good movie on their hands but they wanted to be like Batman and they killed it, too bad:(

I'm sorry but I will take the word of the multiple doctors who treated my dad and preformed his heart transplant without a hitch and they fact that limiting salt intake has caused both of us to lose weight and our blood pressure to go down over some random guy or group who are just trying to get hits on their website.

Also things are so salted down that even if you go that high, you can still easily go over that with out knowing it. Heck we salt things so much that ever cakes have that much salt in them and it is not need. I have been baking all my life and removing the salt has yet to hurt any cake I have ever baked.

Sorry but i will take what I have seen first hand and what I know from preparing food on a daily basis over some website.

Yeah if you look on the back of the package you can find the sodium content and it keeps going up.  The different packing companies keep upping the content because it is a cheap way to try and boost the taste of the meat in a way most people will notice.

It is better then prepackaged meat, my dad can't even touch that stuff.  Still the uncooked meat is starting to have too much salt, my dad can only have the one brand of chicken and hamburger.  I have had to get really creative to keep dinner from getting boring.

It's insane that the public is not aware of how much salt boosts your risk of a heart attack and causes you to gain wait and no one makes meat that doesn't have sodium added to it these days.

Yeah and the fact that the meat companies keep upping the salt content in their meat is a real problem the FDA or someone needs to get on.  There is only one type of chicken my dad can eat without dying now and even they are upping their salt content in recent months.  Americans eat way too much salt and in many cases the companies that package our food do not even give us a choice in the matter.  Just cutting salt out of your diet can cause you to lose a lot of weight fast.  The public really needs to be better educated on just how bad salt is for you.

Yeah my dad can't take slat since his heart transplant. Luckily we have found all sorts of food taste better without salt as the natural flavor is brought out and no longer covered up.

Cambles makes a line of low sodium soups that are not too bad that you can make in the microwave.  They are labeled Healthy Requests and they are low enough in sodium that my dad can eat them.  Still given the choice I would rather have home made soup.

If it gets any more wet outside I am going to have to start building an ark.

This always strikes me as odd and to me it shows that Youtube and the rights holders don't really understand how internet reviews and other things work.  I mean There is a large portion of my home video collection that I term the so bad it's good section and they are mostly all movies that I bought because of the comedy reviews or rifftrax I came across online. I wouldn't even have bought the prequels on DvD if it were not for Rifftrax.  I mean I have gone to the trouble of tracking down a few of the movie The Cinema Snob has done just because I wanted to see them unedited.  Far from costing them money, having these shows that use clip generate money for the rights holders but getting people like me to go out and buy a copy of their movies on DvD.  Why can't the rights holders seem to wrap their heads around this fact?

I mean heck if the makers of Clonus had denied MST3K permission to do their movie would anyone have alerted them to the fact that The Island ripped off their movie? The fact is people like me do have a kind of sick love for these bad movies and we are loyal fans just trying to share this really strange relationship we have with these films.  I mean this is how sick it can get some times, when I was watching that one Dirty Harry movie I got really excited when I spotted Charles Pierces name in the credits because he made the Legend of Boggy Creek, in other words the fact that he let his movie be mocked made me a fan of his, why doesn't that seem to count for anything when it comes to these sorts of cases?

DuracellEnergizer said:

DrCrowTStarwars said:

Why can't rights holders understand that even bad reviews can still generate sales for them since some people will want to see how bad the thing is.

I think they should at least have the decency to ask any given user to remove their videos themselves before reporting to YouTube for copyright infringement.  

 Yeah I think most people wouldn't be so mad if it was just something between them and the rights holders and they didn't get whole accounts banned.

I mean the Cinema Snob got banned without being given a chance to take the one video that got a complaint out of the hundred or so he has on the site down.  I mean that is just insane. 

That is why I don't want to try this on Youtube because I don't want to lose my account if one video gets a complaint.  I'll give it a shot on those other two sites.

Yeah you are right, wish you had posted that before I skinned that guy who was two inches taller then me.

Okay I will check that out as well, thanks a bunch.

Yes.

I wish I could have my skin replaced.  I am so sick of this rash that no one can do anything about and it always gets worse when we have to close up the house and turn on the heat.

I hate my skin today!

I prefer a static camera that lets me take in the scene to one that is always movie.

Yes I am a bad tempered old fart, leave me alone!

Yeah the mechanical way the camera seems to move in P&S movies is something that I find distracting and takes me right out of a movie so I don't really like the look of anything P&S and I can't think of anything wrong with the widescreen version of ROTJ.