HeavyMetalSunshineSister

and then Gal Gadot went ahead and starred in the best movie DC's done so far

I was such a pretentious little toad in 2013...

Hokay, so, in case anyone comes scrolling through the least interesting blog on this site, some context

Back when this entry was made, there was a pretty big kerfuffle on the blogs between two sides. One side was undeniably wrong in their beliefs, while the other side was angry. There were some, myself included, who, while nominally agreeing with the people who were angry, insisted that being angry made them less right.

This is an incredibly silly belief, and a dangerous one.

While I still, generally, believe that people are deserving of a basic level of respect, the same cannot be said for beliefs. There are beliefs that deserve no respect, which ought to be eliminated as soon as practically possible. For the people who hold these beliefs... Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is tell them that they are wrong, and hold firm in that until they recognize it. Gentle treatment is not necessarily called for.

 

who is Stanley Kubrick

 

I weep for society's future.

 

but who is society

What was the Droideka's crime?

Congratulate them on canceling Firefly, I guess.

Sort of like how explosions are a useful tool in a filmmaker's kit, but should not be the only thing a movie has, Michael.

Were there big droids, though?

the definitive Sully review right here folks

mmh, Shockwave pretty much got it. A story can still make itself good if it takes an interesting route to its destination, introducing memorable characters, making the plot on the way to the ending worth paying attention to, and so on.

I'm sure we can all think of movies where you sit down with a basic template of what to expect based just on the genre, and the movie doesn't expand on that template. You've seen the characters a thousand times before, the plot brings nothing new, even the set pieces seem strangely familiar. In that case, yeah, it's spoiled unless you've never seen a film of that genre before.

(On a side note, unless Chiwetel Ejiofor puts Bingledinck Castingbotch in the dirt and teams up with Surprise Guest Star Alexander Siddig [as Doctor Strange] to save the movie, Doctor Strange is already ruined for me.)

Ehks knows what's up.

I would find the worst day of Christopher Columbus's life, and devote 24 hours to making it even worse.

No one's saying he's not allowed to do it, just that writing a blog entry took more effort and, in an immediate sense, gained him less than Googling would have done.

The entry could have been more interesting if he'd had the thought, Googled the question, and then written something about it in the context of further knowledge of why it happened. Something about the insights into Tom Hanks's sense of humor, or hey wow that time he almost obliterated a hummingbird with a broom.

As it is, Kraggh blogged a question, Scythey answered it. We should probably be thanking her for dumping chilly knowledge straight into our brain-pans.

Now, now, be fair. The Gungans had the wisdom to despise a certain regrettable individual at least as much as everyone else does. They did kick him out, after all.

Also, you should totally have at least one inmate in there under non-specific charges of criminal mischief and/or mayhem. Bonus points if they're a Hutt who, through rigorous exercise, manages to have the physical mass of a Hutt and the strength to move that mass quickly enough to be a serious threat in a fight.

Darth Vader being Luke's father is hardly a spoiler considering that that information is given two episodes beforehand.

Why are you like this.

Anyway, it depends entirely on the person. For some people, spoilers can ruin any story. For others, they only ruin mysteries. Others can read through the same mystery novel five or six times, because they enjoy picking out all of the little moments that point at the big one.

For me... eh. I don't seek them out, but I hardly consider a story preemptively ruined if I find out the end. If I was going to enjoy it before I knew, I'll still probably enjoy it after. To be fair though, I'm one of those nerds that re-reads mysteries.

 If there's anything that I've learned from romantic comedies

I stopped reading here, because I remember enough of the original yikes-fest, and because...

Look. The people in romantic comedies do not behave like actual healthy human beings. At best, they are an exaggeration of human traits designed to communicate the idea of personality in broad strokes when you have less than five hours to get to "know" the characters (and to hit all of the familiar buttons to make the audience laugh, because rom-coms are nothing if not formulaic).

At worst, they are a collection of false images copied from decades of bad storytelling, influenced by a wide array of social mores that are not only mostly antiquated, but are often not even compatible with each other, and which often reflect a rosy view of a past that never really existed while simultaneously attempting to insist that the vision they show is fresh, modern, and real.

I'm not going to say they're the lowest form of cinematic storytelling, because goodness knows there's a pretty thrilling race to the bottom in that category (Hi, Adam Sandler!), but if you can learn anything true from them, it's that people can misunderstand basic human behavior in a number of exciting ways, despite being human themselves.

If we married someone that we liked, we'd no longer be motivated to do anything.

False. I know of people who are happily married to people that they like, and - and I know this is going to sound fake, but bear with me here - they do not struggle to find the motivation to do things. They go to work, because they enjoy not starving (or, if you want to be cynical, because starving would make them unhappy, and you are at least correct insofar as the avoidance of future unhappiness is a powerful motivator), they play board games together, because they enjoy each others' company and also enjoy playing board games, why, one such couple even cooks meals together, because it's something they both enjoy, that they can do together!

And if there is a problem, between these people who like each other, do they just say "I'm fine" and pretend there isn't a problem? No, of course not, that would be silly. In fact, they talk it out calmly, because in addition to liking each other, they respect each other enough to be honest, and to treat each other as reasonable people they can compromise with if they know what the other wants, needs, and feels.

arranged marriages! Statistically, those end in divorce less often than normal marriages

The reason for this is generally because it is legally forbidden to divorce unless under very specific circumstances that have to be verified by an outside source (that is predisposed to avoid sanctioning a divorce), because there is a strong social stigma against divorce, such that one or both parties (but usually the woman, let's be honest here) is viewed as having greatly diminished worth if a divorce happens, or hey, even both of those things at the same time. It is not because arranged marriages produce happier couples.

If you marry someone that you hate from the get-go, you know that there's nothing that can tear you two guys apart!

Not to be morbid, but I'm willing to bet that people pushed into that kind of scenario, without divorce as a practical option, tend to find, eventually, that physical force is sufficient to tear at least one of them apart.

Okay, now, I'm gonna let Kraggh off the hook for a second.

 a benevolent dictatorship, in general, seems like a wonderful way to eliminate a tremendous amount of the stupidity people introduce when left to their own devices.

Wow. You know, I've never liked Hobbesian thinking at the best of times, but there's something very... wannabe-paternal in the idea of a "benevolent dictatorship." I think the very idea is a contradiction in terms, in any real society, because there is nothing benevolent in one person deciding they have the right to take, by force, the right of others to choose how to live their own lives - and if it is to be a dictatorship, rather than someone merely giving out suggestions, then that threat of force must be present.

In summation,

Y i k e s.

Really.

Someone did give her a medal. Nine of them, actually.

Kraggh, buddy, pal, I don't think the word you used has been considered okay in the United States as a term for black people in, oh... longer than either of us has been alive, I'd say.

*ahem*

Anyway, yes, very excited to finally see a Western-ish movie coming out with a main cast that borders on historical accuracy. Now, if we can just get a Viking flick with black, Saami, Native American, and Mongolian Vikings, the history nerd in me can finally enjoy movies again...

I always thought it was a chump move to give a prison cell only one layer of doors, myself.

I'd put in

-Whatever Star Wars calls forcefields

-Xaeraz's beautiful concept for a guillotine-y iris door

-a solid sheet of metal that has to be straight-up lifted out of place by a Very Large Droid

This Very Large Droid brings in the prisoners' meals, which is nice, because nothing else is designed to be able to climb up and down the 30-foot vertical shafts into which each cell is sunk.

It's not the most efficient concept, but it'll be a hoot for either a daring escape or a delightful TPK.

Rhymes in a piece that was (by the writer's own word) originally in another language tend to still work when translated because of translating convention.

Rarely, if ever, will a competent translator translate a poem or song word-for-word. Instead, they will strive for a translation that preserves the original meaning as well as possible - a difficult task on its own, considering the frequency with which idiomatic phrases are used in poetry and songs - and produces a result that still functions as poetry. It's less "awfully convenient" and more a sign of the (either actual or fictional) translator's effort and skill.

As an aside, while I am familiar with the trend of associating the practices of grammatical prescriptivism with the most infamous group of genocidal tyrants ever to disgrace Western Europe with their presence, can you not?

I dunno man, they might not be that into rectangular targets.

Maybe get someone who knows how to draw to make the eagle though

Or hey, an ear of corn would probably symbolize Iowa better. Eagles are kind of overused, anyway - the main thing an eagle symbolizes in recently created flags or heraldry is that the person making it knows that eagles are often used in flags and heraldry. Bit like lions, that way.

I find the idea that a rectangular piece of minimalist art can be completely evocative of the supposedly essential character of a group of people who were accidentally born within the borders of an arbitrarily defined piece of land kinda suspect, to be quite honest.

I would promote the allegedly gaseous being far above the level where he's close enough to any actual operations to do any harm.