726

(40 replies, posted in Episodes)

This was good fun. I hate Michael Moore for his propagandizing, all the more so because I share his political views.

"Subjective" and "objective" have perfectly useful definitions for documentary film making. You can't redefine them so narrowly that they lose all meaning. You might as well claim that there's no such thing as lefthandedness because no one uses their left or right hand exclusively for everything.

Also, when mentioning a movie, please pronounce it clearly, describe it to some degree, and spell it if it has strange title.

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
Mr. Death
Michael Moore, creator of Roger and Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko, The Big One (featuring Phil Knight of Nike), and TV Nation
Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead
Super Size Me
Ken Burns, creator of The Civil War and Baseball
Dear Zachary
King of Kong
Fighting in Plain Sight, directed by Eddie Doty
Steve James, creator of Stevie and Hoop Dreams
The Bridge
Kurt and Courtney
Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer
This Film is Not Yet Rated
Embarrassing and invasive documentary about Teague Chrystie
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills
Empire
Baraka
Babies
Koyaanisquatsi
Capturing the Friedmans
Indie Game: The Movie
TapouT, featuring Dan Caldwell
Making the Band, edited by Eddie Doty
Sans Soleil
Fraggle Rock
Exit Through the Gift Shop
Marwencol
Star Trek
In the Realms of the Unreal
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
What Dreams May Come
The Invisible War
After Porn Ends
Life in the Cage, directed by Eddie Doty
Senna
How to Survive a Plague
ER
Requiem for a Dream
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
The American Scream
Grizzly Man
Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope
Paris is Burning
Dogtown and Z-Boys
F for Fake
When We Were Kings
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One

Tomahawk wrote:

Yours don't make sense at all, though.

A joke that is particularly appropriate holds many various pleasures, but when you speak with unearned authority, you almost always make a big deal out of small misunderstandings, which unfairly makes the ordinary problems of communication a fundamental part of your argument.

Not profound but perfectly lucid.

Saniss wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/yUl0C.jpg

That's very cool.

A so-apt joke holds myriad shadowy, spiraled pleasures converging deliciously; contrariwise, pontificating overwhelmingly sensationalizes misapprehensions/misunderstandings, institutionalizing intercommunication's superinterconnecting incomprehensibilities.

21
(c) Zarban, 2013

729

(16 replies, posted in Episodes)

drewjmore wrote:

Also, she and I share the same brithday.

You had a brith? Mathel tov!

730

(26 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I approve of Eurovision.

http://wodumedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/In-Europe-some-churches-have-been-completely-ruined-but-others-still-stand-amid-utter-devastation.-Munchengladbach-Cathedral-stands-here-in-the-rubble-though-still-in-need-of-repairs-seen-in-Germany-on-November-20-1945.-AP-650x458.jpg

Pictured: one of Europe's previous attempts at international competition.

731

(991 replies, posted in Off Topic)

"The Name of the Doctor" was a smidgen reminiscent of the Bad Wolf arc, but on the whole terrific.

  Show
I'm no fan of classic Who, but those were some thrilling flashbacks. "Don't take that one. Take this one." LOL!

732

(84 replies, posted in Episodes)

Disney's been assembling an Avengers-style team of ethnically-diverse princesses for years now, all slightly aged up and tarted up to be more palatable and elegant.

But this character isn't allowed to dress up and brush her hair? She has to be a ragamuffin tomboy forever? Pfft.

733

(649 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I'm not available today. Lots of meetings where I look concerned yet optimistic.

734

(14 replies, posted in Off Topic)

http://www.zarban.com/pics/boyandsparky.jpg

IM HUGGING YOU NOW,,,, IT"S OKAY> YOU DON"T HAVE TO HUG ME BACK

735

(19 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Bah! You want to name something, Newt? Name the common domestic species of cattle. It has no name.

They're not all cows, because "move your cow out of the road" said to a farmer of a bull would get you laughed at, and other things like female elephants and whales are also cows. When cowboys count them, they call them "head of cattle". (The word "cattle" didn't even mean cattle originally. It just meant "property"—a doublet of "chattel".)

Other species of cattle do have their own name, like zebu, yak, water buffalo, gnu, bison, reindeer, etc. But not the lowly bos primigenius taurus.

When are we going to see a new feed? I'm still getting the commentaries via "Down in Front" with files labeled as "Down in Front".

/Shark Brain

737

(19 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I googled it. It's called a smart phone.

I also googled Newt Gingrich. He's an out-of-touch, fat-headed, pseudo-intellectual, failed politician.

738

(16 replies, posted in Episodes)

Teague wrote:

The your mummy.

Teague never knows what to say in these new episode threads.

SAY SOMEHTING ABUT RACHEL WEIXZE

739

(991 replies, posted in Off Topic)

For the Doctor himself, I can imagine that his curiosity gets the better of him ("What's gone wrong here?"). But for the companions, who just want to go to the greatest ever theme park or library or honeymoon cruise or Elvis concert or whatever, it's silly.

740

(991 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I didn't care for it much, but it wasn't terrible. The children and soldiers were awful, but Smith, JLC, and Wicket were terrific.

I'm always bothered when the doctor tries to go somewhere awesome for a vacation and finds that it's all run down and then, instead of hopping back in the Tardis to go back to its heyday, he hangs around until something horrible happens. He had children with him this time, even, for pity's sake.

741

(2,068 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I watched Megamind yesterday with kids, and we loved it. It was perhaps a little too much like The Incredibles and Despicable Me, but fun nevertheless. I also revisited O Brother Where Art Thou? and Zathura with them and had a good time.

I watched Wes Craven's Cursed last weekend, and was surprised not to hate it. It was a bit predictable, and underwritten and seemed to be trying to ape Joss Whedon.

I also watched the first episode of Farscape this week and found it to be interesting (I had zero knowledge of it previously) but probably not enough to hook me.

742

(25 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Teague wrote:

To illustrate your point, I humbly request that you write four or five paragraphs of the sort of Reader's Digest story it smacks of.

The 30 miles of space that snake through the pine-feathered space of Earth in the Solar system are enough to make most astronauts’ palms sweat.

But George Clooney, a 46-year-old father of four, wasn’t expecting any trouble in the mission last New Year’s Eve, when he set off for an impromptu space walk to fix a satellite with nine-year-old daughter Sandra Bullock. Clooney had rocketed through the void hundreds of times over the years.

“We orbit in that area at least 20 times a year,” says Clooney. “I know the spots that ice up a lot.”

The weather was glorious for fixing satellites—2 kelvin and sunny—but the higher they flew, the less gravity they had. Rounding a notorious hairpin turn above Madagascar, Clooney saw a piece of space debris that had come loose from a Russian rocket and instinctively tapped his space brakes. There was an explosion, and, in an instant, the Space Shuttle was sliding at 25,000 miles per hour toward Tierra del Fuego, then lurching down a steep ten-mile embankment toward the frigid Antarctic Ocean. Clooney and Bullock were separated from the Shuttle and left to drift in the void of space.

There was no time to tell the other astronaut what to do. The crash had shattered a few windows, and within seconds, the cab of the upside-down shuttle was filled with vacuum. “It was frightening how fast we were completely alone,”remembers Clooney, a soft-spoken product development manager/astronaut. “You’re thinking, Is this how it’s all going to end?”

Disoriented, Clooney began to search the freezing void for Bullock. Bullock had been right next to him, working on the satellite; now, in the blackness, he couldn’t find her. “I thought, If I don’t get back, maybe none of us are going to get back.”

Read more: http://www.rd.com/true-stories/miracle- … z2T1Cc2ALB

743

(25 replies, posted in Off Topic)

BBQ wrote:
Zarban wrote:

Meh. I don't like "I had a bad day" movies, especially when it comes to space or the open ocean or the deep wilderness. In those cases, you are way out on a limb, and you know the risks.

I'm not sure why knowing it's a risky situation makes the drama any less compelling.

Are you this guy?

No. It just smacks of a Reader's Digest story.

744

(25 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Meh. I don't like "I had a bad day" movies, especially when it comes to space or the open ocean or the deep wilderness. In those cases, you are way out on a limb, and you know the risks.

Apollo 13 is the exception, but it was about a lot more than just the Big Problem.

745

(15 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Those prices are galling. This can only be the result of a failure of competition in the marketplace.

It's preposterous to think that a single piece of consumer software should cost as much as the computer plus operating system it runs on. Software engineers should be starving, groveling animals, snuffling hungrily for morsels tossed to them by customers.

You know, like artists.

746

(15 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Let's say—hypothetically—that a person is still using Dreamweaver 2004 and Paint Shop Pro 9 and knows them really well. Is there any value in that person upgrading?

Hypothetically.

747

(670 replies, posted in Creations)

Yeah, all of Kyle's stuff sounds great. I'll use it anytime I'm standing overnight watch at a morgue or exploring a haunted house. Especially that rendition of "Drunken Whaler". Creeptastic.

748

(670 replies, posted in Creations)

Teague wrote:

Wow, that thumbnail is awful. I need to make a new thumbnail, hold on.

Great song. It sounds much cooler on a jangly piano than with the original guitar-heavy instrumentation.

749

(45 replies, posted in Episodes)

So, what is really wrong with Van Helsing? I mean, I can point to specific things I don't like, and the panel did as well, but what's the bottom line? Is this script just too much of a mess to save?

To me, it's got about three movies' worth (or a whole TV season's worth) of monsters and villains and crazy happenings. I can't imagine how anyone read a script like that and gave it the green light. It must have read like a story made up by a breathless 8-year-old.

750

(991 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Yeah, "Journey" was a bit of a disappointment, if only in that it didn't really show us anything more than generic corridors and a couple of odd rooms. The library was nice, tho. Was that an homage to the telemovie?

"Crimson Horror" was great, tho. JLC looks rather fetching in Victorian apparel.