What are some of the small things that bug you about shows and movies you generally like?
I have three off the top of my head:
In Ronin , Robert Deniro has been shot. He says to his sidekick, Jean Reno, something like “I need a doctor or a veterinarian, someone who can take this bullet out.” Sidekick say, “I can do better.” Then he takes him to this old guy who’s only qualification is that he is a figurine painter with big magnifying glass on a stand and an exacto knife. Deniro then has to stay completely awake and tell them how to perform the surgery.
In what way is that better than some kind of skilled health care professional, who could remove the bullet while Deniro is anesthetized?
In Battlestar Galactica, there are way way too many reporters. I realize the Secretary of Education was traveling with a press tour when the planets were destroyed, but you would figure some of the reporters would give up reporting once you know, there network was completely wiped out of existence. I mean the 50k people living on that fleet must have a choice between something like 30 news channels. The media must be the single biggest employer of humanity in the universe.
In Firefly, I though they could have toned down the old west feel just a bit. I liked that they were space gunslingers, but some people were actually carrying 19th century firearms. I think I saw one miner in an episode actually carrying a Sharpe’s rifle and Zoe is carrying a chopped down Winchester. Given that they fled earth sometime after space travel was available, why would they replicate centuries old firearms, especially when other more modern weapons are available, as evidenced by some of the other guns the crew carries?
One of my absolute favorite movies is The Iron Giant. Which I will hear no criticism of. Except that I really don’t like the extended laxative sequence. It’s just out of place, and beneath the rest of the movie. When I recommend this movie to people, I wish I could give them an edited version missing that whole part.
Haven’t seen Ronin, but from what you’re describing, I’d venture a guess that the figurine painter would have no reservations about removing a bullet from someone and not notifying the authorities, where a professional health-care provider would be legally bound to call the cops and report a gunshot wound. Just a guess…
Personal preference in weapon choice, or they’re actual antiques (admittedly unlikely) or the schematics for making those particular weapons survived and they’re cheaper to manufacture and purchase than more advanced weaponry is, and so on. Can’t agree with this criticism at all.
That would have been my first throught. Plus, the fact that he knows Reno well and seems to be very wealthy indicates that he may have other skills besides figure painting. Some of those skills could be very helpful.
Yeah, you would think those people could be pressed into service doing somehting a tad more useful. But, um, I think the military is the largest remaining employer.
Those weapons are 1) simple to manufacture, 2) simple to maintain, and 3) simple to use. The Colt 1911 .45 pistol is still a favorite for many, many people and it’s new exactly a spring chicken of design work. Many argue that revolvers are more accurate than semi-autos, too, which would explain their inclusion. Lever-action and bolt-action rifles have (most times) the same arguement going for them- they are a more accurate shot than (most) semi- or fully- automatic rifles.
I can bump that last objection easily enough. In parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, tribesmen operating out of small, illegal shops build AK-47s and even anti-aircraft weapons, essentially by hand.
Hell, if modern tribesmen can produce handmade AK-47s, a fully automatic weapon which is extremely reliable and durable, why would anybody want to make those old rifles?
Thru out Trek, the transportersconstantly have/cause problems. For a peice of equipment that important, you would think they could do better.
One of the silliest transporter mishaps occurs in The Big Fucking Whales From the Past movie, Trek IV. After locking on to Admiral Kirk, theenergy beams is just about to start, as indicated by the high pitched whine, and Gillian jumps on Kirk to get beamed up too. WTF? The transporter was tagging Kirk. Are we to assume that they habitually include enough of a fudge factor to allow for a WHOLE OTHER PERSON to get picked up in the beam?
Why, what’s to prevent a horrible accident from happening? Like creating a double at the remote location, or splitting a person into good and bad halves? The implications are frightening.
Better than this, the implications of even standard transporter use are terrifying. As far as we can deduce, a transporter works by atomising the target, and then constructing them in a new place. This means that every time you use it, you are killed and an exact duplicate of you is created. It may look like you, think like you and even believe itself to be you, but it is in fact a completely new person (imagine if that duplicate had been created without first vaporising you. You’d think it would happen more often.). This also has some interesting applications: want an instant army? Just get a highly loyal, highly trained warrior and run him through the transporter a few times, overriding the “kill person A” safeties. Bingo!
Combine this with replicator technology, and there really should be no concern in the Federation about fleet size- they can make any army they want in hours.
Now, there must presumably be a time lag between the death of the old you and the creation of the new you by the transporter. This takes only seconds, but what if you could prolong it? Say, by forty years? At the age of seventy, you could choose to die, and a new, thirty-year-old you would be created, to carry on your life. People would never die!
Happy C, we have entire chapters devoted to these arguments in the Nitpickers Guild. You should look that up. Google Phil Farrand or Nitpickers Guild. And be sure to join in on every single one of our Trel threads. We need some new blood in the Trek Dopers Society.
The only saving grace for this scene, for me, is the music playing in the background - not that I think it’s particularly wonderful (though it’s not so bad), but that I can’t seem to identify it. Once I know the name of this piece, this scene will probably lose all its magic for me.
From my all-time fave gangster film, the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing:
EDDIE DANE: . . . So I start wondering why Einstein is going to see the gorilla . . .
The film is set in an unspecified year, but almost certainly during Prohibition, which ended in 1933. I’m fairly certain Einstein’s name did not become a popular byword for intellect until much later – not until after WWII, I think, due to his associations with the atomic bomb (although Einstein never actually was involved with the Manhattan Project).
It bothers me more that Starbuck is the World’s Best Everything. (Although I guess that’s easier to be with only 50,000 people around.) She’s an interrogator, sniper, flight instructor, hotdog pilot, tactician, etc, etc, etc, and she looks about 26. Also, she’s often really freaking irritating.
Also, yeah, I realize the ship is being decomissioned at the beginning of the series, but it seems awfully unrealistic that there’s only that many people around to run it. Don’t ships on the verge of decommissioning still have more than one watch?
Which is undoubtedly why they are used by the military today.
One might make an arguement for colonists forced to emigrate like Australians manufacturing black powder weapons with hammers and anvils, but duplicates of Navy Colts and cowboy clothes went too far in my opinion.
And yes, opinions are like noses, everybody has one.
House expects us to suspend our disbelief for quite a few of their cases, but that’s not a problem for me. What I do hate is how House’s ex or Cuddy will just pop in while he’s in the middle of examining someone and bitch at him right in front of the patient. There is no way in hell that would ever happen IRL. I find them doing detective work at people’s houses more believable than that stuff.
My *Firefly *one is different, and I must admit it would never bother me if I wasn’t a Commentary Junkie. But in some commentary or another, the costumer (who does not get enough credit for a FABULOUS looking show, IMHO) mentions that Zoe’s leather thong wrap necklacey thing is meant to symbolize her “ties” to Wash through marriage. Yet in Out of Gas when Zoe first meets Wash in a flashback, (and doesn’t like him at all!) she’s wearing the leather.
Drives. Me. Nuts.
And it’s such a stupid little thing, I really should get over it.
Firefly: Yes, I can see a need for simple guns, but not that simple. The Colt .45 and the AK47 have both been brought up as weapons simple enough. Lever action guns are no more accurate than others, and although early semi-autos weren’t as accurate as bolt actions, that is no longer true.
I also am pissed as hell that Josh sold out and killed off 1/2 a happily married couple, as you know the rule is in Hollywood that you can’t have a happily married couple. Rat bastard sell out. :mad: Look, I love the idea, the humour and the characters, but this went too far.
Iron Giant- one long extended propaganda cartoon for the anti-gun people. :mad:
BG is just plain crap, craptastic crap, mayor of crap-town. Hey, either do a re-make, or don’t. Don’t just take the title and the idea, then dis the rest of the show. Some of us had fond memories of the old BG, cheesy as it was. Why go out of your way to piss on us? If you wanted to do something as different as possible- then don’t use the name or the concept- try an original thought, maybe. Rat bastards. :mad:
One of the inovative things about Firefly was that relationship. I to regret that, but I think he was ending the series.
Wow.
I won’t mention that I really like this show and think the old one fellated with great allacrity.
I’ll just ease on out…don’t mind me…nothing to see here…
