DuracellEnergizer

BB-Rey said:

And unrelated to George and Star Wars I’d say Frasier is superior to Seinfeld, Friends, and other sitcoms of its time.

This I can agree with mostly (I was never a regular viewer of Seinfeld, so I don’t know how the two compare).

Bail Solo

I’ve never liked Hans Zimmer. Monotonous and forgettable sums up his work.

ray_afraid said:

Anakin Starkiller said:

I never understood the appeal of The Shawshank Redemption.

A great story well told. Great charters & performances. Beautiful cinematography. Wonderful score. Resonating themes.
You don’t have to like it, but lots of appeal.

+1

I was brought up in fundamentalism — in the literal existence of Adam & Eve 6000 years ago, in Noah’s global flood, in the Exodus, in Jesus as God the Son born of a virgin and physically raised from the dead after three days — and it was never very real for me, even during my intensely religious phase at the tail-end of my teenage years. It was only when I had the rug pulled out from under me, had my world flip-turned upside down, and everything I believed in dashed upon the ground, that Christianity and religion/spirituality in general became alive for me. It took awhile to get there, but I managed in the end.

“Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth — penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.”

― Joseph Campbell

Two days ago was my 10th anniversary as an ot.com member.

I’m not sure film noir is a genre, either.

Dek Rollins said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

Terry Gilliam is a very hit-or-miss filmmaker. And I think he skews more towards the latter.

For context, what do you think are the “hits”?

Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and Tideland. I originally liked 12 Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but found they were less than the sum of their parts upon revisitation.

Terry Gilliam is a very hit-or-miss filmmaker. And I think he skews more towards the latter.

The Midnight Gospel (Season 1)

Alternate universes, deviated preversion, philosophy, psychedelia, spirituality — it’s like this show was tailor-made for me.

EPISODE RATINGS

• “Taste of the King” – 7/10
• “Officers and Wolves” – 8/10
• “Hunters Without a Home” – 8/10
• “Blinded by My End” – 8/10
• “Annihilation of Joy” – 9/10
• “Vulture with Honor” – 8/10
• “Turtles of the Eclipse” – 8/10
• “Mouse of Silver” – 9/10

SEASON (SERIES?) RATING

★★★★★★★★★☆

All the PT fanboys suffering from ST-induced PTSD desperately need a lifeline, and this is it.

Didn’t know Spike Lee directed a SW movie.

fmalover said:

Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance was over the top.

I love over-the-top. There aren’t enough over-the-top actors in the business anymore.

Vultural said:

Who knew murder, decapitation, rape (male & female), prison riots, bribery, etc … could be so entertaining?

DuracellEnergizer said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

• Films & TV shows are sorted together.

Changed my mind on this one. I now sort films & TV shows separately.

I now sort short film collections separately from movies & series.

Sound and fury signifying nothing.

I really liked There Will Be Blood, but that’s due to Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance more than anything else. A lesser actor in the role and I probably wouldn’t even remember it.

Stargate SG-1 (Season 1)

Cheap, derivative, full of filler, with only a few bright spots to alleviate the monotony. A case can be made that the series overall is better than the original movie, but this season alone absolutely isn’t.

EPISODE RATINGS

• “Children of the Gods” – 7/10
• “The Enemy Within” – 6/10
• “Emancipation” – 4/10
• “The Broca Divide” – 6/10
• “The First Commandment” – 5/10
• “Cold Lazarus” – 6/10
• “The Nox” – 6/10
• “Brief Candle” – 5/10
• “Thor’s Hammer” – 6/10
• “The Torment of Tantalus” – 6/10
• “Bloodlines” – 6/10
• “Fire and Water” – 6/10
• “Hathor” – 4/10
• “Singularity” – 6/10
• “Cor-ai” – 6/10
• “Enigma” – 5/10
• “Solitudes” – 6/10
• “Tin Man” – 5/10
• “There But for the Grace of God” – 6/10
• “Politics” – 5/10
• “Within the Serpent’s Grasp” – 7/10

SEASON RATING

★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

He used a 3D printer.

/thread

ADDED

WEEDED

Regarding that Back to the Future trilogy set, I’ll only be keeping the first disc. I dislike BTTF2, and BTTF3 can’t really be enjoyed on its own, so there’s little point cluttering up my collection with movies I’ve never watch again.

As for the first season of Stargate SG-1, I may be weeding that one right-quick. I’m almost done rewatching the season, and boy, has it not aged well.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Stargate

Stargate '94 has amazing costumes, sets, music, and lore, but weak writing and characterization. Stargate SG-1 has good characterization and writing, but it feels like a Trek knockoff, complete with generic English-speaking extraterrestrial civilizations and technobabble. I’d essentially like to craft a Stargate reboot which contains all the best elements of SG '94, SG-1, SGU, and the Bill McCay novels, and none of their worst.

I’d probably limit the humans seeded across the galaxy to north African stock rather than go gung-ho with Greeks, Chinese, Native Americans. etc. Also, no frickin’ Ancients/Ori/Ascension. That stuff wrecked Stargate for me.

Felt it was time to expand on this.

I did start work on this project. In 2016, I completed a rewrite of SG '94.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n5KJoU_ItjkYTH5V58ouJp8oar41F0fy/view

Written at the height of my postmodern phase, it’s a pretty thorough deconstruction of the original film (American imperialism doesn’t save the day; it gets an entire world killed). It was meant to be the first part of a trilogy, but shortly after starting on the sequel, development stalled; a casualty of the burnout I suffered while working on my PT rewrite at the time.

I never completely abandoned the project. I’ve continued to brainstorm, to write notes, to lay the bricks/work out the kinks of my personal Stargate universe. Now I’ve got a pretty solid vision in mind.

• Ra is Atum. I made this change because Atum is an older god than Ra, was worshipped earlier than Ra, and also because the pharaonic Ra of Stargate more closely resembles Atum than the hawk-headed Ra of myth.
• Atum isn’t a Goa’uld. He is one of the Ancients, who in this universe were amoral gray-skinned reptilian humanoids who reigned in the Andromeda/Triangulum galaxies prior to their extinction. The Goa’uld are a separate, unrelated species native to the Milky Way which Atum’s underlords conquered some 5000 years after the Rebellion on Earth.
• Atum has fourteen underlords under him: Anpu (Anubis); Apis; Aset (Isis); Ausir (Osiris); Djehuti (Thoth); Hapi; Heru (Horus); Khnum; Ptah; Sebek; Sekhmet; Sokar; Ubaste (Bastet); and Wadjet. Each underlord serves a different function in orchestrating the Imperium. When an underlord dies/abdicates/is ousted, their first prime takes their place, assuming their name and position.
• Atum was originally a benevolent ruler. After 2000 years of rule, ennui drove him to relegate command of the Imperium to his underlords and go into seclusion. His underlords then turned the Imperium to a totalitarian state, inciting the failed rebellions on Nubt & Abdju and the successful Rebellion on Earth. With the passage of 10,000 years and the coming-and-going of countless underlords, the Imperium has ossilated between despotic and liberal governments.
• The Goa’uld were genetically modified by the Imperium to curtail their ability to reproduce and take hosts. Only a limited number of fertile queens exist, and their offspring are incapable of growing to maturity without the administration of growth hormones. Infant Goa’uld are placed within first primes, boosting their immune systems and lifespans; adult Goa’uld are implanted within underlords to preserve their intellects, granting them a form of immortality.
• The Imperium consists of several hundred worlds concentrated within the Milky Way. Most are inhabited by humans and genetically engineered human offshoots, all descendants of peoples taken from North Africa in 10,000-8000 BCE.
• A small number of non-human species joined the Imperium. The most notable of these was the Setim. A caninoid race native to Tuat, they agreed to provide Atum the technological infrastructure to build his empire in exchange for help repairing their planet’s damaged ecosystem. This arrangement was mutually beneficial at first, but following the underlords’ rise to power, the Setim were displaced from positions of influence and forcibly relocated to the ice planet Nubt. With the Rebellion on Nubt, the Setim were exterminated by Sekhmet. Disgusted by this and other atrocities commited by the Imperium, one of the first primes, Sutekh, went renegade. Wearing a helm fashioned after the Setim likeness, he established a revolutionary movement on Earth, culminating in the Rebellion on Earth.
• The Apep are a species of giant, tentacled serpents — former enemy of the Ancients, present enemy of the Imperium. They aren’t nice guys.
• Heru Guards wear retractable, full-body power armour; this armour is impervious to any terrestrial ordnance short of .50 caliber machine guns. Heru Guards are armed with over/under pulse rifles; the primary barrel discharges a plasma blast which can kill, the secondary barrel discharges an electrolaser which only stuns.
• The staff weapon is a ceremonial weapon wielded by Ubaste Guards alone.
• The Imperium has developed lingual nanites. Injected within the language areas of the brain, they link the individual to a vast language database, enabling them to understand/speak/read/write any language stored within the database while also uploading any languages they know to the database. Daniel Jackson was injected with these nanites after being captured by Sekhmet’s forces during the first stargate mission. Following Daniel’s return to Earth, some of these nanites were extracted and replicated, giving the SGC access to this technology.
• FTL propulsion/communicators don’t exist. Conventional interstellar travel/communication is only possible through the stargate/supergate networks. Atum’s intergalactic voyage from his homeworld to Earth took 2.5 million years.
• Stargate addresses consist of nine symbols each. Each address corresponds to an individual gate.
• All stargates are iridescent black, with chevrons/engravings which light up white when active.

SARAH JAROSZ

It’s certainly bland as fuck, but there’s far worse out there.

Two words: time dilation. It’s what happens when you don’t have a fancypants FTL drive at your disposal and have to resort to near-light speed travel.