1,851

(207 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Matt's is The Great Escape. ShadowDuelist's might be Eye of the Storm.

Mine is Viet Cong Valkeries, which, by the way, I now claim copyright on as its own title.

1,852

(207 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Is it backwards day? That's ALSO 2010: Moby Dick.

Yours Truly, R2D2

1,853

(6 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I heard that Superman had come to town to see who he could rock.
He blew away each crew he faced until he reached DIF's block.
His speakers were three stories high with woofers made of steel.
And when the boys had come outside, he said "I boom for real."

And then he turned his power on, and the ground began to move.
And all the buildings for miles around were swayin' to the groove.
And just when he had fooled the crowd and swore he won the fight.
Teague rocked his butt with a 12 inch cut called "Disco Kryptonite."

Pretty sure I heard that in the '80s.

1,854

(38 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Zarban wrote:

You know what a star destroyer has? Health and safety classrooms and infirmaries to mend the broken bones of people who fall off the precarious catwalks and ledges with no railings.

In fact, it suddenly seems obvious to me that stormtrooper armor was never MEANT to stop blasters. It's only meant to reduce injuries from falls and banging your head into half-closed blast doors.

Why else would they wear it even in the middle of their own impregnable military base?

Stormtrooper motto: "All the gear. All the time."

1,855

(207 replies, posted in Off Topic)

FCW's guess was wrong, but reasonably close. "He Who Challenges Satan" was supposed to be Daredevil.

1,856

(207 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Letters from Iwo Jima

He Who Challenges Satan

1,857

(207 replies, posted in Off Topic)

fcw wrote:

The Stand-in for Paul Newman's Vacuum Pump

The HUD-sucker Proxy, my favorite film that uses the phrase "extruded plastic dingus"

Examiner Gizmo

1,858

(38 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Seriously. The Tardis has a pool and several squash courts. Does a star destroyer have that? No.

You know what a star destroyer has? Health and safety classrooms and infirmaries to mend the broken bones of people who fall off the precarious catwalks and ledges with no railings.

Oddly, both have bunk beds.

1,859

(207 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Zarban wrote:

Next: Tippy Top Sail

Hint: Very highest, smallest sail of a square-masted ship; one word

1,860

(207 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Gregory Harbin wrote:

The Complete Collection of the Chief Executive's Masculine Primates

That's All the President's Men

Nex: Tippy Top Sail

1,861

(207 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Legends of the Hidden Temple

And Doc, I was totally planning to do O Brother next as Hey Good Buddy, What's Your 20?.. with the assumption that I would probably have to accept Breaker! Breaker! as an alternative.

So instead....
Four-Poster Finials and Sweeper Staves

1,862

(207 replies, posted in Off Topic)

All right, let's get this party restarted.

Tommy Atkins: The Ascendance of Viper

EDIT:

Matt Vayda wrote:

Has the thread entered the Magic Hour of it's existence?

Wait. Is that a riddle? Is the answer Twilight?

If so, Tommy Atkins: The Ascendance of Viper is on the table.

1,863

(38 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Oh, and the Fokker DR-1 should not be forgotten. Audacious, wrong-headed, deliberately unstable... but a terror in the hands of the Flying Circus.

http://www.airplane-pictures.net/images/uploaded-images/2008-2/6/10180.jpg

1,864

(38 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I've always been partial to the F4U Corsair—the gull-winged Navy fighter from Black Sheep Squadron—but even more so for the P-38 Lightning. And of course the Spitfire has English charm, like a Lotus 7 with wings.

Lockheed P-38 Lightning
http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/lockheed-p-38-lightning-2.jpg

By far, the idea that there is a prophecy and our hero is the fulfillment of it is the worst, in my opinion. It makes me just check out of the movie.

1,866

(42 replies, posted in Episodes)

I forgot that Miki totally blamed the chatroom for ruining the Shawshank commentary by not allowing the panel to do Morgan Freeman voices the whole time.

You should have kept the following couple of minutes when you seized upon doing Wanted. It was like the panel grabbed a life preserver. "YES! Wanted! We'll do that instead! OH THANK HEAVEN!"

1,867

(31 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I am not generally a chatter (or sociable, or even personable), so I don't have much interest in Google+, but I can agree that the TinyChat is not the greatest because the window is only 12 lines.

Also, it's sized to a wide screen (I use a tall boy 1050x1600 monitor), and I lose the chat when I need to refresh the video, and there are no smiley buttons. smile

Also, I would like a button just for shouting SASQUATCH! when blurry shapes pass by the camera. Also, one for JEFFERY, LOL, because I get tired of typing that.

[blink]Also, a button for blinking text.[/blink]

But these are all minor things. I have no interest in any outside, non-sanctioned, Teague-excluded means of communication.

1,868

(207 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Well, it's been three days. How about a hint?

1,869

(11 replies, posted in Off Topic)

The conventional wisdom is that the Torchwood series was written badly. To wrap it up, they created the "Children of Earth" miniseries. But people absolutely went nuts for "Children of Earth," from die-hard-old-school Who fans who hated Torchwood to my stepmother. So bringing it to Starz was their way of starting over and trying to make it good.

I figure if I like the reboot, I'll buy Children of Earth and have the grounding I need to understand what's going on, thereby avoiding the early Russell T Davies crapfest episodes entirely.

The Aristocrats!

1,870

(11 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I'd never seen more than 3 minutes of Torchwood before, but this was fun. I'll keep watching.

The Bill Pullman legal bunk was eye-rolling, tho.

1,871

(4 replies, posted in Off Topic)

vidina wrote:

Gah, this reminds me so much of how good Futurama was, and how bad it is now hmm

A couple of the movies were weak, but the new episodes are good. You can't compare eps now with the BEST eps from the Fox years.

These have all been terrific....

  • The Duh-Vinci Code - the mystery that leads to planet of DaVinci

  • Lethal Inspection - Hermes helps Bender find his origins

  • The Late Philip J. Fry - the forward-only time travel

  • A Clockwork Origin - the planet of robot hyperevolution - now one of my favorites

  • The Prisoner of Benda - the body switch episode - now one of my favorites

Which ones do you think have actually been bad? I didn't like the cat or EyePhone episodes, but even they were okay.

1,872

(207 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Trey said in the recording session that his was X-Men: The Last Stand.

Eddie's is Cocktail?

1,873

(1,019 replies, posted in Episodes)

Good fun! Thanks DIF and chatroom!

1,874

(1,019 replies, posted in Episodes)

I'm going to stop now because the idea that Michael is engaged in a Harry Potter debate via his phone makes me sad.

Again, I LIKE the movies. I just wish Harry weren't constantly having things explained to him by Hermione and used magic more that wasn't just knocking people down.

I've studied and even written about the same stuff, and it's interesting but really only applies to adventure stories. Straight drama, character studies, murder mysteries, thrillers, horror stories, and episode stories generally don't adhere to this pattern. Some thrillers are about losing innocence but that's a different story from gaining status or growing up.

How does this pattern apply to Revolutionary Road or Wild Strawberries or Psycho?

He does You Only Live Twice—highly structured adventure, to be sure—but Bond doesn't grow up, gain status, lose innocence, or win a kingdom even metaphorically in any of those stories because they're highly episodic. He doesn't even learn anything by disguising himself as a local and practicing martial arts with his allies (as claimed).

And the idea that "all stories start and end with a state of perfection" is hilarious, especially since he admits that most stories skip the "real" start and begin when the state of perfection has already been lost. What about stories where the world remains in turmoil at the end? In his video for The Matrix—an absolutely archetypal hero's journey—he glosses over this by saying "because this is a trilogy, we know it carries on." Not in 1999 it wasn't, and neither was Star Wars in 1977.

And what is the "state of perfection" at the beginning and end of Taxi Driver? Travis isn't actively stalking anyone? And Saving Private Ryan? The war goes on—without Damon OR Hanks.

I think that, while it's useful to talk about common plot points in general terms (travel to an exotic land, meet the villain, train with a mentor...), it's foolish to say that every good story follows the same pattern beyond "the protagonist faces adversity, then learns something useful, then uses that knowledge to overcome the adversity."