asterisk8

Beatles

Future or past?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennette_McCurdy

She's 19. I'm 30. I'd hit it till I broke it.

wrong thread

darth_ender said:

Well, I am currently reading the sci-fi LOTR equivelent known as Dune.  It will take me ages to get through this considering how busy I am lately, but so far it is quite fascinating.  Definitely a different type of science fiction, but I really enjoy it.  It took me a long time to get around to picking this up because I once saw the 1984 film (I was quite young at the time, making me appreciate it even less I'm sure) and realized how awful it was.  I couldn't imagine any story that film was based on being so amazing.  Now I am happy to prove myself wrong.

Dune is one of my favorite novels of all time. It's apparently cool to hate Dune in some elite sci-fi circles, but I loved it to an almost orgasmic level.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

9/10

An astounding tour, directed by the esteemed Werner Herzog, of the 30,000-year-old paintings in Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in Southern France. Absolutely breath-taking, in the true sense of that word. The entire audience sat enraptured by Herzog's long takes of the paintings, the way he brought us into the cave with him and gave us every opportunity to explore and examine without needing to continually cut to talking heads to comment and contextualize like most documentaries do. 

A once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Your great-great-great-great grandmother? That makes me feel old. My grandfather on my mom's side was born in 1899.

Saw The Tree of Life again. I may have to move it to my top 5 films of all time. Every second of that film is perfect to me. But I don't rearrange the top 5 lightly, so we'll have to see how I feel about it after I watch it at home.

In anticipation of this second viewing, I watched Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The Thin Red Line (I saw The New World when it came out). I think Days of Heaven was my favorite of the three, and The Thin Red Line my least. TTRL failed to really connect with me like Malick's other films. I'd rank them like this:

The Tree of Life - 10/10
Days of Heaven - 10/10
Badlands - 9/10
The New World - 8/10
The Thin Red Line - 7/10

This puts Terrence Malick easily in my top 5 favorite directors after Kurosawa, Kubrick, and Coen, and before Wilder.

xhonzi said:

We take turns reading aloud. 

When my girlfriend was away at college, we would read to each other over the phone. We did this with The Hobbit and a great book called The Solitaire Mystery. It was actually a lot of fun and made it feel like we weren't half a continent apart.

Reading a beautifully-written, dark and twisted steampunk-style fantasy called Perdido Street Station

I mean, one of the characters looks like this:

What's not to love?

I just found this in my photbucket from years ago. I have no idea why I altered this drawing, but if there's such a thing as art, this certainly isn't it.

HAHAHA! I didn't even think of that. The hospital bracelet does look like a fat joint. Oh great. Now I can't ever look at it any other way.

HA! Yeah, the end of that middle finger came out kind of rectangular. I'll have to fix that.

Drawing I did of my nephew the day he was born.

Badlands

Oh, Malick, you were light years beyond everyone else from the very beginning, weren't you? What a strangely beautiful and disturbingly dispassionate tale of an aimless quest for freedom in the face of death. I loved that Malick never condones or condemns his characters' actions in the film. Much in keeping with his Heideggerian background, things are what they are, people do what they do, and the mere fact of their existence is enough,  without theorizing a psychological "why".

9/10 roundy things

My dad was kind of like that too. Not rough and cold to such a degree, but quick to anger and he believed in corporal punishment and would get angry just for strange things like making my sister laugh in the backseat when he was driving. Like you, I came to terms with it and I loved my father very much despite his unpredictable temper.

I've found that The Tree of Life dredges up memories in its audience in a way few films do. I think it has to do with Malick's style, his talent for bypassing the intellect and hitting you straight in the gut with some abstract emotion you weren't prepared for. It took me years to appreciate abstract expressionism as not an intellectual style but a viscerally emotional one, and I think Malick is perhaps the best of the best expressionistic filmmakers alive.

RedFive said:

asterisk8 said:

The Tree of Life.

Are we still using balls? I'd need a pool full of them to properly rate this expressionist masterpiece.

Hell yes, that movie was amazing. 

Going to see it again with a different group this weekend.

Just like practically every showing I've read about, probably 10 out of 50 people walked out at some point in the first hour. A middle-aged guy behind me kept mumbling complaints to his wife every 10 seconds. I shushed him twice to no effect. Finally after a half hour of listening to him I turned around and said, "I can't listen to you talk the entire movie. Please be quiet or leave." They left.

After that, the remaining 40-some people sat in perfect silence. I feel like there should be a sign at the box office that says, "The Tree of Life is not a Michael Bay movie. If you can't appreciate the opera, the ballet, or a symphony, you probably won't appreciate this movie, so we recommend you see something else."

RedFive said:

I felt like I experienced my childhood over again. 

Is that what your dad is like...? :(

The Tree of Life.

Are we still using balls? I'd need a pool full of them to properly rate this expressionist masterpiece.

Christopher Reeve made the perfect Superman but those films are full of hokey, bad humor, lousy effects, and Gene Hackman was a terrible Lex. If not for Reeve, I think those films wouldn't be remembered nearly as fondly.

I hate the texture. It's like Martha Kent put the suit in her waffle iron before giving it to Clark.

TV's Frink said:

I find Kevin Smith movies wildly overrated.  Except for Clerks.

I agree 100%. Chasing Amy is one of my most despised films of all time. Gives me the dry heaves. I hate Kevin Smith's dialogue. Every character in every one of his movies talks the same.

skyjedi2005 said:

Nolan's take on ... Superman

Hotlink?

skyjedi2005 said:

Inception was absolute garbage too

Funny how opinions come across like facts with you.

ToscheStation said:

TV's Frink said:

ToscheStation said:

TV's Frink said:

twooffour said:

It's worthy to note, however, that the Windu vs. Palpatine duel had next to no acrobatics (only one short frame of CG Palps doing some frog flip against a desk), and it was one of the most tense, intense duels in the prequels.

All of Palpatine's terrible facial expressions would like a "word" with you.

 

   lol.

 TV's Frink said:  "The Titanic would like a word with you."

 make that two "would like a word with you" references.......

....hmmm, sounds familiar.

I never claimed I don't recycle jokes.

     Two negatives* don't make a right....

    * "I never" +  "I don't"

 

Nothing wrong there, grammatically. It's a rhetorical figure of speech known as a "litote", an understatement that often uses double negatives to deny the opposite of the case.

For the most part, I try to focus on the content rather than the person. hal's delivery left something to be desired, but I agree with the basic premise that the saber fights in the PT are more acrobatic in part to appeal to a younger generation accustomed to heavily-choreographed dance-like fight sequences and "wire fu"-style acrobatics. I also agree with TheBoost that there is more to it than just that, and as is often done with Star Wars, you can point to enough in-universe reasons for the change to satisfy most fans.

I did nothing of the sort. If I took any side, which it isn't at all obvious I did, I took the anti-ad hominem side. I actually agree with parts of both sides of the argument.