Dave wrote:
Zarban wrote:

First.

And then I don't write the story.

This.

However if I ever get around to writing it, Night of the Vented Spleen will be awe-inspiring.

How is naming the kid going? tongue

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(359 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I didn't see the prologue, but I saw the 3D trailer in front of The Hobbit and I was surprised how bad the 3D looked. I thought conversions were better than that by now.

I saw, according to my ticket 'HFR3D The Hob' (pronounced 'heifered'?). On the up side it didn't give me a headache like 3D usually does. Huzzah. Also I didn't hate the HFR as long as I told myself 'Pretend it's a live play' once every 20 minutes or so. I imagine that I could eventually get used to it. So while I would be happy to never see a 3D or HFR movie again, if I have to see a 3D movie I would honestly probably rather see HFR3D.

That said, it made the makeup look like makeup (especially old Bilbo), and most of the swords looked prop-ish. Basically real things looked real and fake things looked fake. And when it's a fantasy movie...that's not a good thing. Also when they either time ramped things faster or slower than IRL it looked very unconvincing. However, I would love to see, say, the Cirque movie in HFR3D.

The movie itself was uneven and very Peter Jackson. Big problem with stakes when your main cast is clearly invincible. I liked the white council and riddles in the dark parts best, and had to remind myself that all the Gandalf-ex-machina and cheesy parts (except Radagast) were pretty much directly from the book. I don't know what was up with Radagast, but I think they were trying to make up for removing Tom Bombadil? I don't remember him being quite that silly in the Silmarillion.

If you don't mind spoilers you can always watch the Honest Trailer:

But I strongly suggest watching the actual movie yourself first.

Pretty sure I started the name calling on OSC in another thread, and while I still stand behind it, it was probably inappropriate due to being off topic. I made my own decision based on essays of his I have read online. You too can read primary sources! You don't have to come to the same conclusion! Relevant essays by OSC, linked without further comment: one, two, three.

I'll probably go see the Ender's Game movie when it comes out. I hope they do a good job of it.

Have some shark socks:
http://tsocktsarina.com/blog/images/2012/11/upshark.jpg

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(346 replies, posted in Off Topic)

A fascinating tour of the ISS. It's both bigger and smaller than I thought it was, and reaffirms my strong desire to not go to space. I like my home with gravity, large air-filled spaces, and bedrooms bigger than phone booths.

The video also shows just how different current space travel looks from the sci-fi visions (Alien, Star Trek, Sunshine, etc.). Things such as having to detach their exercise bike from the wall so that it doesn't vibrate the solar arrays... it's a whole different way of thinking and living.

Also, I love her hair.

For Teague: A handful of regular ladyposters!
http://i.imgur.com/qnhIX.jpg

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(255 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I read the rest of the Ender series and at least some of the Shadow series. Speaker for the Dead et. al. are not much like Ender's Game, but I recall liking them and being impressed by the ending of Xenocide. The Shadow series was more like Ender's Game, but I didn't like how it reimagined some of the events. Also when I noticed that OSC is a homophobic asshat it kind of turned me off reading his books.

Cat's Cradle traumatized teenaged me and I've been meaning to read Slaughterhouse Five for years.

Most recently I read The Great Gatsby. As with when I read 1984 and Brave New World, I felt like it was written for a different time and that a lot of the 'edgy' ideas are things I don't find revolutionary now.

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(165 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I've only seen the first season of Game of Thrones, but I seem to remember being amused that every episode with female full frontal nudity had male full frontal nudity. It was like someone was trying to balance it out exactly (not counting bare breasts, of which there were many). There was also one sex scene with two women and one with two men (though the circumstances were rather different and the one with women was on screen while the one with men was more implied off screen).

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(216 replies, posted in Episodes)

Finished the commentary. I'm stunned that there are apparently large numbers of people who haven't heard of shawarma. I could probably walk to three shawarma places from my house...

...ok I just checked the internets and apparently I live in 'the shawarma capital of the world', or at least outside of the middle east, so I have sampling bias. Anyway, it's delicious. And a bit sketchy since they saw the meat off this large rotating column of meat of unknown history. A delicious large rotating column of meat. And then they add garlic and who cares what else and stuff it into a pita.

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(216 replies, posted in Episodes)

fireproof78 wrote:

Captain America is stated to be in the constant state of physical perfection, his body the peak of humanity. While there are women who can find this attractive, the actual act of being sexually aroused by the image of Cap is not just a matter of seeing Cap with his shirt off. Despite the poses on romance novels, that is not the foundation of female sexual fantasies. An image is not (generally speaking-there are exceptions of course) enough to kick start female sexual arousal, while for males it is more than enough (Megan Fox is proof enough of this).

I think this is part of the reason comics don`t necessarily cater to females but romance novels have been targeted at the female demographic for ages. Recently they`ve even moved more mainstream just like comics have; see the Twilight novels and Fifty Shades of Grey. Both feature what I would argue to be unrealistically sexualized male characters (from the female perspective).

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(316 replies, posted in Episodes)

fcw wrote:

'Crash' was a clunky, predictable melodrama.

Agree. I couldn't stand Crash. Also:

Blade Runner and Prometheus both struck me as having nice art design but were otherwise equally bad movies. (More unpopular for the Blade Runner part than the Prometheus part)

Speed Racer is a perfect movie. I don't understand why it didn't get better reviews.

I have a deep and irrational hatred of Shia LaBeouf's acting. When I see him on screen I have a strong urge to punch him in the face.

Thor was a bad movie but I enjoyed it. Because Hemsworth, Hiddleston, biceps, and accents.

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(216 replies, posted in Episodes)

Dave wrote:

Great episode. In this conversation I see a lot of angry opinion, but none from women.

Well there aren't a lot of women on the DIF forum. Honestly I thought about posting but a) I'm not a fan of angry opinioning on the internet, b) Dorkman seems to be doing fine and has more references than I do on hand, and c) I haven't had a chance to listen to the whole podcast for context.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I posted the Avengers picture above in the cool photos thread or elsewhere ages ago*. I thought it was funny, but agree that it's not the most egregious example of ladies with twisty spines. I tend to object more to entirely undeveloped and unrealistic female (and male) characters in movies/comics/whatever than to sexualized marketing.

*Edit: I can't find it, so maybe I didn't. I did post this one: http://downinfront.net/forum/viewtopic. … 614#p23614

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(1,649 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I love the creativity of WOTE's music videos. They've also released the one-shot take before the time scrubbing and ramping:

I know the quote from Looking for Alaska by John Green (with a changed pronoun). Are the the silhouettes and constellation pattern BBC Sherlock?

191

(1,649 replies, posted in Off Topic)

CollegeHumor won't embed, so link: Gay Men Will Marry Your Girlfriends

Penn and Teller are pretty well known. And funny. And very American.

Paul and Storm are also an American comedy duo. They sing with Jonathan Coulton and run W00tstock.

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(1,649 replies, posted in Off Topic)


Good old Patrick Boivin

194

(473 replies, posted in Episodes)

The Bride from Kill Bill representing Miramax.

Finally saw The Guard after having it on my list for a long while. If you liked Hot Fuzz AND In Bruges AND you can follow Irish accents you'd probably like it. Brendan Gleeson is eminently watchable and the chemistry with Don Cheadle is great. Mark Strong does his thing too.

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(11 replies, posted in Episodes)

Our house just got picked to do a Nielsen ratings like survey for a week in booklets. Now I feel obligated to start watching Community that week tongue

One of the many awesome things about Speed Racer on Blurray is that when I put the disc in the movie starts playing. No ads. No trailers. No FBI warning. No menu.

Why can't they all be like that? WHY????

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(18 replies, posted in Episodes)

Is this the video you're talking about? It's the heat shield dropping, not the sky crane:

But the sky crane crashed too, and I seem to recall seeing a picture of the dust cloud taken by Curiosity.

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(18 replies, posted in Episodes)

That first XKCD with the rover always gets something in my eye. *sniff*

Dorkman wrote:

The bit about transporting -- if you by chance meant teleporting -- makes it sound like it might be the 90s version of The Tomorrow People.

I looked up some episode summaries of The Tomorrow People and I don't think so. My impression was that there was teleporting, but that the blue glowing wall did it (???) and that the characters on the tower didn't know where the heck they were or how to get back. It wouldn't surprise me if the show was British or Australian though. For a while I thought it might have been Round the Twist, but it wasn't.

I've tried googling to find it at various times but "buried blue glowing wall of doom" doesn't get one far tongue Considering it's a 20 year old memory I'm mostly left with my emotional reaction to it more than what was actually on the screen, and I was a pretty impressionable kid. After seeing parts of Ghostbusters 2 I was terrified for years that pink slime would come out of the shower.