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BmB said:

This is a display of ignorance, not of theorists, but of the US government.
If you knew a tenth the shit they've done you would know to not trust a single word they say and always assume the opposite is likely true.

Thank you. I'll be honest. I put that last bit in there as bait. You took it, ignoring the evidence in the first part so you could rant and curse about the evil government and other people. Says all that needs to be said about you, and is scarily identical to every other conversation I've had with conspiracy theorists. You're a riot!

I agree with Monroville and another commenter that Luke's face is too orange in that shot. The bluer tint to his face gives one the impression that Luke is so cold that all the blood has drained from his face to keep his core internal organs warm. It makes him look in far more physical distress than having a face flush with warm color.

Somewhere in the middle between the bluray and Ady's preview shot seems more right to me. Just my opinion, of course.

The simplest pieces of evidence that are impossible to refute without inventing top-secret technology:

1. The fact that amateur and professional radio enthusiasts tracked Apollo 11 all the way to the moon. They could hear every transmission, and had to adjust their equipment regularly as the earth rotated to remain fixed on the transmission. What were they tracking? There was some actual object transmitting radio frequencies as it traveled from the earth to the moon.
2. Apollo 11 astronauts installed laser range-finding retroreflectors that anyone with laser range-finding equipment could use to measure the distance of the moon. Someone/something installed those things at precisely the right angle to allow universities and laboratories around the world to aim their lasers and take these measurements as early as July 1969. How did they get there?

In order to hoax these two pieces of evidence - pieces of evidence that were available to people AROUND THE WORLD - we need to imagine advanced secret technology available to NASA, and we're back at the important question: If NASA had all this top-secret technology and the means to pull off a conspiracy of this magnitude, why is it so hard to believe they had the means to strap a few death-defying test pilots to a rocket and fire it at the moon?

What I see, all too often, the common denominator among moon hoax theorists, is a distrust of the American government. We start with the conclusion that "The American government is a pack of lying conspirators," and then we work backwards to get to, "The moon landing was a hoax."

All good advice.

Believe me when I say, I am not damning his parents, neither am I a "transient participant". I've been close with my cousin since we were babies, I see him 2-3 times a week, and I have been involved in almost every aspect of his treatment since the brain tumor.

At this point, I am the ONLY caring person in his life that hasn't checked out emotionally. This is not a judgment about his parents' characters, this is a fact about their behavior. He has no friends left, his sister moved out of state, so it's his parents and me. I appreciate what you say about what his parents have gone through, but suffice to say their behavior and lack of concern for him is something that goes back a looong ways. They put off his CAT scans because they didn't believe him. They explained away every symptom he had, and repeatedly told him not to worry and get so worked up. It wasn't until he fell walking to class and injured himself that a scan was done and the tumor discovered. This was a year after he first started complaining about bizarre symptoms.

As for myself, I cared for my father - who I was VERY close to - for 2 years in my home while he died of cancer. I've been through therapy myself, and my grandfather was a psychologist, so caring for a sick person, and therapy in general, is not new to me. I have been taking copious notes, and I've been in touch with his psychiatrist. He has a full brain scan every 6 months to determine if there is new growth, so his brain is being monitored.

Right. He's seeing a psychiatrist, whom I've met and I like a lot, and a psychologist for weekly couch sessions. The important thing I'm realizing is that he's not being totally honest with them, he's leaving certain things out, which I try to stress is not going to enable him to get any better. He missed his follow-up appt with the psychiatrist yesterday because he stayed up until 4am and then took 2 Ativan, which knocked him out for 14 hours. His parents' attitude is, "We gave him the pills when we went to bed at 9pm, if he didn't take them till 4am, that's his problem."

When I spoke to his mom today on the phone, I told her she needs to give him his Ativan and watch him take it. She had no response except, "I'm done. I can't deal with this anymore. He needs to start looking for his own place." I said, "You can be done with the behavior, but are you done with your son? Really?" She had no response. The woman has checked out. I was so pissed off at her I threw my toast across the room, lol. I said, "If he had lost his leg in a car accident, would you be making him change his own bandages and crawl to the kitchen for water, or would you be sleeping next to his bed and helping him?" No response.

I'm realizing that his parents are the problem. They put off having his CAT scans done 7 years ago when he was complaining about dizziness, headaches, forgetfulness, and blurry vision, and the doctors said if they'd caught the tumor earlier, they could've prevented the mild palsy he has on one side. Instead, now he's deaf in his right ear, has no taste sensation on the right side of his tongue, and can't type, drive, or play the guitar anymore. Now, they're hiding their heads in the sand about this, and I'm so worried he's going to end up being institutionalized due to their chronic slowness to act. I'm about ready to move him in here so I can keep a better eye on him.

Bingo, that's what I really hope. It's been 6 years since the repair work, though, and he's never had these kinds of delusions ever before.

What's weird is this Manti Te'o thing seems to be a seriously sophisticated scam and it's happening at the same time that my cousin imagines a sophisticated scam being played against him. It's making ME feel crazy!

CP3S said:

It is hard to see people we care about go through things like this. For some reason, at least for me, seeing someone I know struggle mentally is heart wrenching. Makes me feel so helpless and powerless.

I hope things turn out okay and that he is doing somewhat better. Hopefully he has a followup appointment very soon?

 

As far as somebody being able to hack facebook, why would anybody go through that much effort just to prank someone? Sounds very time consuming, posing as a whole friend's list worth of people and making cleverly thought out subtle little mockeries. And it would take a very special sort of person to do that sort of thing to someone suffering from post-craniotomy mental disorders.

Thanks, CP3S. I agree, it is really hard. His parents are no help at all, his mom is too fragile, and his dad's attitude is, "Aw, you're fine, you've been doing so good lately, just stay strong and get some good sleep!" Neither of them are any help. I'm literally the only person this guy has in the world who knows how to handle this. It was so hard to stay calm and not freak out seeing my cousin having such bizarre and impossible waking hallucinations. I ended up laying in bed Tuesday night shaking and crying when I finally was able to let go of all the tension from dealing with this all day. It's extremely scary.

He has a follow-up appointment today, which is why I called the doctor, because I know my cousin will try to minimize it and act in the appointment like he's doing better. I believe the best course is to admit him to the hospital for a few days so he can be monitored. But his parents are against that, because they're in total denial that this is serious.

Thanks for the reply, AntcuFaalb.

He is not very computer-savvy, and I found out yesterday he doesn't even have virus or firewall protection. He ran with a bad crowd in high school, petty criminals, drug abusers, etc. He's convinced that a couple of these guys are perpetrating this attack against him to ruin him. It is, at least theoretically, possible that someone has gotten access to his computer through a virus or trojan (although I've yet to see any evidence of this). But it seems like a lot more work than just typing some mean stuff about a person. We're talking about creating an entirely fake Facebook with all the image and status displaying technology of Facebook. Seems as unlikely as someone hacking the MSNBC news feed.

I've spoken with his doctor, and he thinks it's more likely that we're seeing an underlying delusional disorder coming to the surface. The next step will be prescribing an anti-psychotic for a few days to see if that helps.

My cousin had a brain tumor 6 years ago and underwent 2 operations that left him with some physical and mental health issues. He's been on anti-depressants and seeing a psychiatrist and psychologist. Other than having some up and down moods, and periodically losing motivation, he's been doing a lot better.

He called me in the middle of the night 3 days ago, panicking that his Facebook had been hacked. He claimed that someone has "broken into his system" and when he logs into Facebook, everyone's pages have been replaced with clever forgeries designed to mock him and his friends and family. He claimed all of the status updates, comments, etc. were all fake, but he refused to read me any of them because he said they were very personal and embarrassing. The next morning, he called me in a panic that they'd "infiltrated the television" and were now replacing the news ticker at the bottom with subtle mockery designed to be innocuous to everyone but him.

I called in sick to work and drove over, because I was becoming concerned. He had print-outs of Wikipedia and Facebook pages he said had been hoaxed, but I couldn't find anything unusual about them. He made me watch MSNBC, but the ticker was totally normal. To him, a ticker headline like "Obama to appoint Secretary of Agriculture" was thehackers mocking his interest in organic farming. I took him to see his psychiatrist, where he admitted he hadn't slept in 48 hours and had smoked some marijuana a few hours before this started. The doctor felt that those were the reasons for this, and prescribed some Ativan to help him sleep for a few days. It's now been two days, and my cousin is still talking about this hack and how sophisticated it is. He's been covering up nail holes and cracks in his house to prevent "those assholes from watching him".

I'm really concerned that this is not an acute paranoid delusion, but the onset of something more permanent and serious, like schizophrenia.

What I'm curious about is if there even is a way to hack and replace someone's Facebook news feed and friends' pages with fake information. Is that even posible?

You're probably right, I've just always had a fear of my dog jumping out the window while I'm driving.

FanFiltration said:

Wow. That makes me sick to my stomach to think that dog was hurt. :(

FanFiltration said:

The title of this thread is " Did DKR warn us about recent "False Flag" shootings?", not OMG! DKR truly warned us about recent False Flag shootings!!!"

 there is a HUGE difference.  

 

24-hour cable news channels do this ALLLL the time. It's an old trick. Frame it as a question and you can suddenly make all kinds of inflammatory statements on television without taking responsibility for them. "We're not suggesting Obama is a Muslim, we're only asking people if they think he is."

I'm not saying that was your intent, but merely pointing out that it was framed as a question doesn't change anything.

I don't associate HFR with soap operas. When I think of high frame rates, i think of video games, which is why the scenes with CG Azog reminded me of cut scenes from a PC game.

What I felt was that I was on the set with the actors. The costumes, make-up, and effect were mostly amazing, but in scenes with real people, the high frame rate broke the cinematic spell, exactly like walking onto the set.

I could see HFR 3D working really well with certain kinds of material, but this is not it, as far as I'm concerned. I don't want to be on the set, I want to be in Middle-Earth.

It's similar to a complaint I have with some Blu-Rays, like the Wizard of Oz. It's so crystal clear and sharp that Oz looks like a crummy set now. That's not what a Technicolor print on the silver screen looked like. I don't think a film like The Hobbit is supposed to feel like you're standing there. It's supposed to feel a little less real than that.

Last night, I saw Life of Pi in 3D, and it further convinced me that 24 fps is film. That film would've looked small and "too real" at 48 fps. I never really thought about it until now, but I think 24fps has a charm that's lost at higher frame rates. I'm aware that I'm just used to 24 fps, and HFR technology might have a charm all its own, but it's not the same as the charm of real film.

zombie84 said:

But when it was just a close up of an actor, still, but with all the subtle movements and stray hairs blowing in the wind...that, with the 3D, made the movie come alive for me in a way that no motion picture had before.

I actually envy that you had that experience. That's what I wanted to feel! :(

I think I had my first real "uncanny valley" moment thanks to The Hobbit. I went in wanting to like it, fully on-board, but I now wish I'd seen it in 2D. The image was so close to reality, but just "off" enough to be weird and confusing. The extra work my brain had to do to pay attention to the story and also process all the extra motion and my immediate negative reaction to it, it was exhausting!

The extra "immersion" provided by the higher frame rate was uncomfortable, "too real" in a way that broke the spell. Real people magically become other characters, other creatures, at 24 fps. At 48 fps, they remain real people in costumes.

When an actor moved quickly, the lack of motion blur made their actions seem sped up. I'm certain that everyone in our theater noticed it. It was very distracting.

The HFR worked on some of the slower stuff, particularly with Gollum, and some of the sweeping vistas. The camera work in Bag End felt particularly rich and believable. But actors working against green screen looked awful in higher framerate. It looks like something filmed for basic cable. It's not cinematic.

Men In Black 3 - 5.5/10 - Not as bad as I expected. Definitely better than the second one. Josh Brolin was great, I love Jemaine Clement, and I thought the twist at the end with the young kid (no spoilers) was a pretty nice way to bring everything full circle.

Leonardo said:

Is the theatrical cut out there? I know that when it came out on dvd, it was only the extended cut.

The Blu-Ray has the theatrical and the extended cuts.

Bingowings said:

I count Jean de Florette / Manon des Sources as one film, and it is in my Top 10 all-time favorites. Lovely films. The original novels are great as well.

Blues Brothers - 8/10 - I saw this as a kid and then never again until I watched the extended cut last week on Blu-Ray. It was an amazing experience with my sound system, like a concert at home. My girlfriend and I had a blast, laughing a lot, and we even ended up dancing to some of the numbers, especially "Think". I'd love it if a faneditor put together a bonus disc with all of the Blues Brothers' live performances on SNL and some of their videotaped concerts from the late 70s. That would be a great addition to my shelf.

DuracellEnergizer said:

 

I really don't think there are films that are almost perfect - great movies, yes, but almost perfect? I can't say that about any film I've seen, really, I just can't.

I never said anything about "almost perfect" so I'm not sure where you're getting that from. I said there are no perfect films, so a 10 is reserved for the best of what we have to watch. I said it's a relative thing, so you find a movie you love with the least amount of flaws, and that gets a 10. That's the most any of us can do, especially us amateurs who haven't studied film in a serious, professional capacity.

DuracellEnergizer said:

I evaluate a film based on how well it clicks for me, personally - aesthetically, emotionally, spiritually, how the performances work within the film, how it all comes together, etc.

Like I said, the film that does this the best, with the least amount of flaws, is a 10 for you.

Seven Samurai is my favorite film of all time. I think it's one of the greatest films ever made, but its flaws are a slow beginning, a lack of blood, some OTT performances, and some bad fight choreography. But I give it a 10 because I've never seen a film I love more with fewer flaws.

McFlabbergasty said:

Disclaimer: I'm not an endocrinologist, so I might have no idea what I'm talking about.

 

For about a decade, since my early teens, I've had an ability to induce a set of sensations within myself at will. First I feel like there is something in the back of my head that tenses just a little bit, then I feel a tickling sort of sensation throughout the backs of my legs. From the back part of the upper thighs down to the ankles. Sometimes I can't quite control the intensity. I get carried away and the tingling gets to be too much and I spasm for a second to let out the steam. I can repeatedly activate and disable this mechanism several times a second. My best guess so far is that I can somehow release small amounts of adrenaline into my system at will.

Does anybody else experience this? Any explanations? 

That actually sounds more like a mild panic attack to me. At least, when I have panic attacks, they are accompanied by a weird tenseness in the back of my head, tickling/tingling in my extremities, and an overwhelming desire to spasm to release a feeling of building energy. But a panic attack will also include a feeling of dread. How do you feel, emotionally speaking, when this happens?

The mind is an incredible thing, so I wouldn't rule out the possibility that you are able to consciously alter levels of hormones, or release some neurotransmitters. There are monks that can raise their body temperature at will, so who knows?

DuracellEnergizer said:

I have given 7-8 ratings before, but sparingly, and usually to films that I've grown up watching.

Such as?

DuracellEnergizer said:

And I have no list of movies rated 9-10. I've never seen a movie that qualifies for such high ratings and, IMHO, I doubt any exist.

How can that be? There are no perfect films, so it's pointless to reserve 10s for perfection. A 10 doesn't mean the film is flawless, it means that it is the best of what there is. It's a relative thing. Whether it's an attempt at an objective rating of all films, or a subjective rating of what films you've personally seen, it's relative. For instance, Seven Samurai, Lawrence of Arabia, Barry Lyndon, Sunset Blvd., Vertigo - these are the best films I've ever seen, films of incredible technical skill and beauty that I've become more emotionally and intellectually invested in than any other film. I'm passionately in love with each of them, I could watch them each 1,000 times, so they receive 10s. Maybe there's a better film out there that will lower the score of all of the above, but I haven't seen it yet.

To me, not giving any film a score above a 9 is like saying that there are no films that you are passionately in love with. You must have a favorite film or two that you think are almost perfect and you love and could watch again and again.

It also brings up the issue of whether we're trying to give objective or subjective ratings to films. Are you trying to be objective? Because I don't believe that individuals can give objective ratings, so that's why I tend to use the term "favorite films" instead of "best films". I think the closest we can get to an objective list of the best films is through consensus, by compiling A LOT of subjective lists.

zombie84 said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

Suspiria (1977) - 5/10

 

Wait, wait, wait...

 

 

 

WHAT!!?

I'm not sure I've seen DuracellEnergizer give a film above a 6/10 rating in this thread.

I'd love to see a list of films Duracell would give a 9 or 10. :)

Fanny and Alexander (1982) - 10/10

I absolutely loved the 5-hour edit of Ingmar Bergman's last feature film. I watched it in 4 parts over 3 nights. One of the greatest entertainment experiences of my life. I was so sad to see it end, if only it had lasted another few hours!

Watching Fanny and Alexander every holiday season will be a new tradition in my family.

generalfrevious said:

They have shot a hole into my heart that will never heal. I know some people will not like what I have to say, but not having a decent bluray of children of paradise makes me as empty as not having a proper blu ray of the OOT.

You haven't even SEEN the movie!!! How do you know you'll even like it?!

I swear to God, sometimes I think you have to be joking with this shit, because it seems impossible that such hyperbole is serious.

I love you, though - honestly - because you're always good for a laugh.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Repulsion (1965) - 6/10

 

Why so low a score? I think it's one of the greatest horror movies ever made, a true psychological horror with an incredible lead performance, fantastic sound design, and the reveal in the last second of the film still haunts me. It's in my top 10 all-time favorite films.

Moonrise Kingdom - 8/10 - a beautiful, funny, and poignant coming-of-age story. Fails a little in the final act, but the two child actors in the lead roles were incredible.