I always thought that the roadblock robots were not so much separate entities as much as extensions of Otto’s programming…sort of like his limbs, if you will.
Not to speak for Alessan, here, but likely he’s out of touch for a few hours…
I disagree. I understand your point but I disagree. Yes, the tragedy of the Quilmes is strong and real.
But what is defined, at least for me as a Jew, in Alessan’s writings is that the holocaust is NOT an isolated incident for the Jews but merely one of the larger, more recent events in thousands of years of terrible, horrible, genocidal efforts by what seems, to many Jews, to be the entire WORLD.
Even today, down in Venezuela Hugo Chavez, deprived of Bush to declare the enemy, is turning against the Jews of his country to continue his demogogical ways.
I live in a small town in southeast Ohio. I moved here five years ago. It was more than six months before I told anyone here I was a Jew because one of the very FIRST lessons you’re taught is that, when outnumbers, keep your head down. Or, as Robert Heinlein put it “A mouse at a cat show is justified in maintaining a low profile”.
So forgive us if we don’t join in the kumbayah of one-world, one-humanity. Humanity has shown, time and again, over and over, that given a chance they’ll turn on us and make another run at extinction of the Jews.
That, my friend, is what ‘That’s the last time we let you do that to us’ means.
Um . . . you seem to both agree and disagree with Alessan.
While Jewish history demonstrates an ongoing pattern of discrimination, to put it mildly, this is hardly unique to Jews. Homosexuals, darker-skinned peoples, women–the experience is more universal than you and Alessan patronizingly allow.
And short people. Don’t overlook short people!
Short people got no reason to live.
So lissener, I though you said you were done arguing with me. “Thanks, Alessan, for making it so clear how pointless it is to waste my time with you any further”, I think were your words- said thrice, as if you were summoning Beetlejuice.
Anyways, I think that what we have here is one of them unbridgeable gaps in perception. If you want to open a Pit thread, fine; I’ve grown bored with the subject myself, but if you want to take it to a more appropriate forum, I suppose I’ll show up.
Short people piss me off.
-oh wait.
And:
Good Will Hunting
When all else fails, just repeat the words “It’s not your fault” continually to the patient until he believes you. That’ll solve it.
:::wondering if nanoplaque is some insidious molecular form of tooth decay, which is seldom detected before it’s too late:::
But one of them runs and locks himself in a supply closet when he sees the rogue robots en masse: that’s another problem with the movie; all the robots - for example the other EVE’s, and presumably the other WALL-E’s - are mindless automata until it suits the plot to have them behave independently.
Maybe they lost cable.
Grease? Sounds like a summary of western popular culture, 1965 and onward.
What, you never saw The Blue Angel?
Suffice to say, massive spoilers.
28 Days Later:
The whole “infected vs. zombie” internet debate is pointless, and I blame this movie.
The security and containment fail safes of the research lab at the start were so shoddy that eco-nuts or not, that virus is getting out. I mean a bunch of kids just sneak in like it’s nothing. All it takes is one scientist making a small error and apparently the facility can’t be locked down. Nope, it’s insta-apocalypse.
At the beginning when the infected come through the glass window on top of the protagonist? He should die. He’s on his back, the infected is on him, and infected always vomit blood on their target’s face to spread the infection. This one doesn’t because he’s on the hero of course. Then his new friends come and rescue him and zombie blood goes splattering all over the place as they’re hacked to pieces. The hero is sitting there slack jawed. Blood should be flying into his mouth, eyes…
The dad and daughter “need them more than they do” even though the father has set up a nice little fortress and he has police riot gear and is collecting water with buckets whereas Selena and our newly awakened protagonist are wandering around eating candy bars.
Infected can hear you climbing on shopping carts in a building but they can’t hear blazing car alarms in the middle of the street
Wanting a cheeseburger is a justifiable reason for going into an “abandoned” gas station filled with corpses…by yourself.
Even if most of your loved ones died and the world is ruined, you can always have a grand old time at the grocery store.
After seeing your dad shot hundreds of times in the back, be sure to call out “Dad?” just in case you’re a little unsure and then await his reply
Soldiers won’t go closer than 20 feet of the infected Frank after he’s dead, but they are quite happy to be about 3 feet or less from a live infected, chained to a wall and spewing blood all over the place.
British soldiers can go a maximum of 28 days without sex before losing their minds.
Radios in England can’t pick up signals, even on the AM band, from the European Mainland. Same thing with televisions.
British soldiers do not have to means to communicate with the outside world via internet or short wave radio and are left to assume that “The End Is Effin’ Nigh.”
Killing zombies make men violently horny. Actually, this is probably closer to reality than not, but still, the way it’s presented and the way it segues into the (failed) rape was awkward.
Short Circuit 1:
Forget the AI and robot chassis, give me the shoulder mounted laser that makes trucks and tanks explode with a single shot. The army should be all over that and just ignore the silly toys.
Short Circuit 2:
This Sandy woman is socially oblivious. How did she NOT know Ben was trying to (awkwardly) woo her?
I think Johnny 5 would have been pulled down the street when he stopped the taxi, even if he is heavy and incredibly strong. He wasn’t bracing himself and I don’t think running his tracks in reverse would have helped much.
Although the scene overall was well done, heart stopping, and Grade A Nightmare Fuel (I’m not sure what was worse, when they smashed his eye or when they splintered his arm to pieces. “It’s still moving!” combined with Johnny’s pitiful cries for mercy…oh god…and the scene where he’s in the alley with the chalk is so depressing) but the way they get him is just…weird.
In both the first movie and this one Johnny 5 easily wins in combat vs. humans…except here. He may be slow to recognize danger but once he does he’s unstoppable unless you have explosives (see earlier where he took care of them at night, “To the moon Alice!” etc.). Here he already knows something is up…they already tried to run him over and they were chasing him. So the whole tree thing? And he doesn’t understand pig latin? Come on now.
Bringing Johnny back with a defibrillator? No, just…no. More like, fry his delicate electronics, maybe splatter some battery acid everywhere. But good scene anyway.
Let’s cover Johnny 5 in gold plating. He won’t get strip mined instantly, right?
Dirty Harry:
The movie is over in the first 40 minutes if the protagonist can hit a non-moving target with a rifle. Multiple chances are also available after the target is startled and begins to run – failed. Keep in mind, this is the same gun slinger who took apart a bank heist against multiple robbers with a magnum while eating a hotdog.
The climactic chase at the end was bizarre. I’ll give the bad guy props for trying to be intelligent: pick a corner, wait, and shoot the guy chasing. Unfortunately none of these guys can aim worth a lick so it all looks kinda dumb.
Casino Royale:
When running from a spy, even though you have a gun, take no opportunity to use it. Instead use complicated gymnastic moves to dive through increasingly high-up and narrow spaces to impress parkour enthusiasts.
Vesper can immediately (and precisely) size up a man for a bespoke tuxedo dinner jacket.
It appears lot of the dialogue was written by a 13 year old boy. For example…
Vesper: If the only thing left was your smile and your little finger I’d still love you.
Bond: That’s because you know what I can do with my little finger.
After brutal testicle torture requiring hospitalization Bond wants sex. A lot of sex.
I admit to not seeing the sequel, but Vesper killing herself struck me as completely pointless.
Terminator 1:
Why does Arnie run away after the tunnel chase? After the car crash I mean? Sarah Connor was right there in the other car, and he could have easily walked over and strangled her. The cops were there but he’s invincible to small arms so it doesn’t matter. Of course, later in the movie he takes on the entire police force to get to her anyway. The real answer is that the movie would have ended, but why write the script so it leads to a situation like this?
In the same vein, near the end of the movie when everyone crashes why does the Terminator drag himself to the truck, kill its occupants, waste time figuring out how to drive it, and then laboriously turn around and drive over the flipped over car of the heroes? Sarah spends all this time on her knees trying to get an injured Reese out of the car. The Terminator fails at terminating.
At the end when Arnie’s skin is melted off the heroes should have ran down the street instead of ducking aside into a dead end factory. It’s comical to imagine them running into town with the steel skeleton limping behind. Sounds like something Family Guy would make fun of.
Rear Window:
The climactic end when the bad guy is held at bay by camera flashes? So bad it’s horrible.
Strangers on a Train:
The entire plot thread where Guy has to beat Bruno to the carnival island because Bruno will drop Guy’s lighter there and frame him is completely detached from reality. A woman was strangled there. The police would have gone over the entire scene for a hundred feet radius with a fine tooth comb. Plus Bruno’s fingerprints were all over it. This makes the movie from the tennis match on basically anti-climactic.
Secondly, the whole carnival thing was ridiculous when the cop pulled out his gun and “accidentally” shot the merry-go-round operator (just randomly shoot into a group of kids and girls, standard police procedure) and it went on super duper turbo speed.
The merry-go-round completely caving in was the most retarded thing I’ve ever seen in a Hitchcock film. Although I haven’t watch them all yet, so who knows.
Dial M for Murder:
The Inspector would be in hot legal water for his actions.
Why was Tony talking to Halliday at all. He was cheating on your wife! I would’ve told him to GTFO.
When Mark asks the Inspector how he found out about Tony, the Inspector says: we discovered that your husband had been spending a large number of pound notes all over the place.
Why would Tony do that? Furthermore: where did he spend it on? Wouldn’t he have figured it would make him suspicious? The Inspector DID find out… “by accident.” Come on, this guy spent such a long time working out the details of the plot, making sure everything was cool with the bank, and then he acts like an idiot? Burn that crap.
Now for some SERIOUS nit picking: When the Inspector insists that Swan entered the apartment through the front door Tony suggests that he must have stolen the key when Margo lost her purse at Victoria Station and had a duplicate made. The inspector says that he could have got in this way but didn’t because if that was the case then the key would still have been on him when he died and they searched his pockets and it wasn’t.
The inspector then insists that the only possible scenario was that Margo had let Swan in because he was blackmailing her about the letter and she then murdered Swan and claimed that she had been attacked and killed him in self defense.
But it’s not the only scenario! Swan could have arrived at the apartment with an accomplice with the intention of robbing the place. The accomplice could have opened the door with the duplicate key and let Swan in while he stayed outside keeping watch. When he saw that the robbery had gone seriously wrong and Swan had been killed the accomplice could then have fled the scene, taking the key with him.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:
Everything looks lost. Blondie is going to be forced to hang himself. And then the place blows up from a cannonball. What?
Rebecca:
This movie got killed by Haye’s code.
But yeah, lame plot. So his old wife had cancer and was sleeping with her cousin and her husband thought she was pregnant and she tried to bait him into killing her but she actually fell and hit her head on a friggin’ tackle and ended up dying in a freak accident so the husband puts her body on a ship and sinks it then the authorities find it and go to her doctor who says why no she wasn’t pregnant at all she just had cancer. So the police and everyone thinks she killed herself because she had cancer and it was obvious the ship was sabotaged.
Well…GEEEEEEE.
But hey, that’s OK. The movie is still a solid watch. And I liked how it actually portrayed a budding romance fairly realistically: awkward as hell, with stops and starts. But still.
Robocop:
Apparently a woman, even if she’s a cop taking care of a suspect, can’t help taking a peek at a guy’s cock…especially if it’s a black guy. And that’s fine and everything. It’s only fair that it should go both ways (we’ve seen the reverse more than enough). But once you realize this is kinda how Murphy turns into Robocop…um…wow.
One distracting thing through the series: why don’t the criminals shoot him in the mouth? It’s worth a try.
The Blob (1988):
I guess it depends on your definition of “well liked.” This movie has a strong following…it’s a very good B movie. A film which combines the fear of drowning and burning to death in one monster, hard to beat.
The kids in the theater deserved to die. Instead of running to the massive normal exit at the front where all the normal people were going they decide to struggle for several minutes at a very obviously locked back door until our heroes arrive to help them.
I’m not sure if a rocket launcher could do that.
Akira:
When they’re in the cell and basically tell you the deeper philosophical points through the girl’s musings…um…yeah. Just a whole lot of new age non-sense. DNA in space? GTFO.
Neon Genesis Evangelion:
Trying to nitpick a reality bending surrealist post-modern series/film with the angst turned to 11 may be fruitless but look: Misato drinks nothing but beer. Maybe some coffee here and there. But her apartment is filled with empty beer cans. She has beer for breakfast before going to work. This is simultaneously played for laughs and evidence of how fucked up she is. But she’s never drunk. This doesn’t seem to affect her incredibly difficult job. She’s always on top of things. It doesn’t cloud her thinking or anything. Weird.
Oh, another for Short Circuit: to determine whether Johnny really has machine intelligence or not just tell a really bad Jewish joke. Because AIs will understand jokes and laugh at them.
I feel compelled to point out that Schindler’s List was written by a non-Jew, who was reluctant to write the story, and is now a bit miffed that no one pays any attention to the other books he’s written. The only reason he wrote the book was because one of the people Schindler saved badgered him into doing it. Keneally happened upon the guy while on vacation and when the guy found out that Keneally was a writer told him the story and basically badgered Keneally into writing the book, telling him that it was a story which must be told by a non-Jew. I always thought that the “lesson” of the film was that while we can’t control the events which happen in the larger world around us, we can control how we react to it.
RE: Shrek
It’s standard Fairy Tale fare that the beautiful princess is beautiful to one and all. I’m pretty sure he thinks she’s beautiful as a princess, and IIRC part of the story is that he doesn’t think she is/can be interested in him.
Within the story, Shrek is an ogre and therefore ugly. Everyone thinks because his physically ugly, he must be cruel and evil. That’s the whole premise and moral of the story. The princess is cursed with being beautiful by day but an ogre at night. Being an ogre is, by definition, being ugly. There is no need for her to choose to be an ogre for Shrek to love her or want her. Her choice is to be like Shrek so she can be with Shrek. But that’s silly, she has the choice to be with who she wants.
Your suggestion implies that by choosing to become an ogre, she would thereby change her own perceptions of ugly and beauty, and thus possibly find Shrek attractive. But the whole point is that she looks beyond his outer appearance to who he really is inside. By taking that direction, that ruins the whole moral even more.
The other interpretation is that she chooses to be ugly, and Shrek still loves her, because he already was in love with her personality, not her looks. Sure, that fits with the overall moral of the story, but many of us felt the true moral being taught was that an ugly guy can’t get a beautiful chick.
Maybe that’s a trend on the board, and of course I don’t want to speak for Malthus, but in this case you are the one who is stating that Schindler’s List is a Holocaust Denier’s version of WWII. You are the one stating that making a movie about Schindler and showing that some (a very few) Jews didn’t get sent off to be executed or worked to death in concentration camps is making a movie that Holocaust Deniers can appreciate. You are the one asserting that the creator of this movie must be a self-hating anti-semitic Jew simply for telling this story. That is what people in this thread are trying to understand. What makes you think this? What about telling this one story makes you think the creator supports the idea that the Holocaust wasn’t so bad? What about seeing some Jews live through WWII Germany makes you think the author is denying that millions of Jews didn’t live through the war? Why can’t a Jew tell a story about a NAZI who defied expectations and helped rescue some Jews from extermination, without him being a self-hating anti-semite?
And really, I just don’t see how this movie can be seen as a Holocaust Denier’s support. I mean, this movie only makes sense in contrast to what was happening to most of the other Jews in Germany and German conquered territory at the time. Hell, one scene in the movie has Schindler intervening because some other NAZI wants to ship off all the children to the concentration camps. He has to justify keeping them as labor. To accept the premise, theme, and plot of this movie, you have to be aware that the alternative was Auschwitz. Otherwise, this movie is the story of a German who made Jews his slaves at an ammunition plant. And then the Jews thanked him for it, and celebrated him as a hero. That makes no sense.
Well, this isn’t a cite in a peer reviewed journal or anything like that, but it is a major running theme and discussion in The Science of Diskworld books. Those books are a Diskworld story written by Terry Pratchett where the Unseen University Wizards accidentally create a pocket universe that houses “Roundworld”, i.e. our universe. The chapters that tell the story are alternated with explanatory chapters by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, two science writers who are also a mathematician and a biologist, respectively. They argue that humanity should not be named Homo sapiens sapiens, but rather, Pan narrans, i.e. “the storytelling chimpanzee”. They make a pretty good case that what made us humans different was our ability to see the world as stories, and that that ability is hardwired into us. It’s embedded in the way we project possible actions into the future, and predict what could happen.
You two are talking past each other. Something doesn’t have to be cheerful to be entertainment.
lissener seems to be using the phrase “popular entertainment” to mean pandering to the lowest common denominator - “bread and circuses”, pro-wrestling, reality TV. Alessan is using the phrase “popular entertainment” in a sense of something that is enjoyable and well known and liked by many. To Alessan, an unpopular unentertaining story is something like “Showgirls”. Or “Ishtar”. “Howard the Duck”. Etc. In other words, low quality, poorly written, badly acted, badly directed, and generally despised. But ultimately, a movie is entertainment. It can be deep, it can be dark, it can be thought-provoking, but it’s still entertainment. Being popular just means that it is seen by a lot of people and perhaps enjoyed by most of them.
I would hope that it’s taught as a narrative about history, but then a lot of stories are taught in schools as history when they are really narratives about history, and have some elements distorted for many reasons. Think Julius Caesar - the play.
As for Richard Dreyfuss, you really think an actor pontificating at the Academy Awards means anything?
So what, Anne Frank counts for nothing?
While discrimination is not unique to being applied against Jews, can you really not understand that they have a perspective as a people?
Yes. It is one thing for her to nobly set out to deliver the money so they can kill her and let Bond live, but when Bond shows up and starts kicking ass all over the place, she should really make a stronger effort to survive.
Just watched this recently. You’re absolutely right. He’s supposed to be relentless, to not feel pain. Later he actually becomes relentless and goes through getting set on fire and blown up and still keeps coming. So why did he stop here? It’s not like he was trying to keep a low profile. It’s not like he had other Sarah Conners left to eliminate - she was #3 of 3 in the phone book. Yeah, he had some tissue damage, but nothing the cops had on hand would have done anything to him enough to keep him from killing her right there. But he just disappears, like he needs to go reassess the situation and come up with a better plan - a plan that consists of break into the local police station and shoot everyone inside.
I also have to note this movie includes the standard movie physics error of shotgun blasts having far more force on the target than the shooter. Reese shoots the Terminator right when he’s about to blow her head off, and the shotgun blast knocks the Terminator around like a rag doll. Exceptionally unconvincing.
To be fair, Reese was in lousy shape at the time, and the Terminator seemed to be moving pretty fast for having a bum leg and been through a fire. I got the impression they didn’t think they could outrun him on foot even with his bum leg, so were looking at the factory as a kind of maze through which they could escape and leave him behind distracted. But things didn’t work out that way.
He likely escapes during the tunnel chase because he has no idea what the police have on hand. Skynet doesn’t know jack about 1984, they don’t even know which Sarah Connor is the Sarah Connor. Standard loadouts of the LAPD is probably way above his programming grade.
Not to mention the fact that earlier Arnie goes into the gun shop looking for a “phased plasma rifle”, so he obviously believes the Terminator-busting guns that the Resistance uses on a regular basis exist in 1984.
I think with the entire Short thing in Shrek was that Lord Farqhaur gave the illusion to all that he was a big person because when he rode up on his horse, it looked like he had long legs.
When his soldiers popped him out of the elongated boots, it was apparent what a fraud he really was.
Kinda like Tom Cruise in lifts.
If Lord F owned up to his shortness, I think it would have been a different take on it.
I get what everyone is saying, but Farqhaur (however it is spelled.) proved in the very first scene what a poser he was.
I can’t let this one pass. If you watch the movie timeline it takes the main characters two days to meet up with the British solders. So obviously it takes a maximum of thirty days without sex before British solders lose their minds.
Ah, this one’s explained easily enough. When the Terminator went to the gun store, we had this dialog:
The Terminator: Phased-plasma rifle in the forty watt range.
Gun Shop Clerk: Hey, just what you see, pal.
So the Terminator didn’t * know * that the cops didn’t have weapons that could hurt him. He thought they’d show up with plasma rifles and turn him into scrap. It’s only after he went off and did some research that he found out that all the police had was small arms, after which he staged his famous police station (I’ll be back) blood bath.
edited to add: Sigh, I read 99% of this thread, but missed Justin Bailey’s identical explanation from this morning. Sorry.