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Posts
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Quote:You know, I didn't think that movie was as bad as the critics made it out to be. Maybe I had low expectations for it going in, but I saw what M. Night Shenanigans was trying to do with the material. Granted, I didn't think the movie was great or anything, but I enjoyed it.The Lady in the Water. Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Freddy Rodrigez, Bob Balaban and Jeffrey Wright (not superstars, but all very good and respected actors) couldn't even make this M. Night ego project palatable. It was awful.
And I can completely understand why people would hate it. -
Pfft. They're marketing flacks. You can walk into just about any restaurant in NYC and order a Perrier from one.
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Quote:I had to look up "The Visitor," and while I have no doubt it was a bad film, it doesn't appear to have had any actor of note in it.Jeeze, you guys really don't know the difference between a mediocre movie and a really, really BAD movie.
Untouchables certainly had some things going for it (like an actual plot, dialogue that mostly makes sense and actual characters). Robin Hood would have been a pretty good film with someone other than Costner in the lead -- like someone who could speak with an English accent. Rickman, Freeman and Slater were all pretty good.
Battlefield Earth was pretty horrible. It was actually better than The Visitor but still pretty horrible. Of the movies discussed above, it is the only really BAD movie. None of the others come close. Catwoman was pretty bad, but at least it had Halle Berry to look at. Showgirls is infamous as a bad movie. But none compare to The Visitor. The only other movie I have ever seen as bad was "Frogs," but that one didn't have any big name people in it.
Showgirls is awful, but you can't tell me a cast with Elizabeth Berkeley was good.
And no amount of looking at Halle Berry makes Catwoman watchable. (I also don't think she's a very good actress, despite having one of those Oscar statues.)
"Battlefield Earth" stands out because it did have a pretty decent cast, a huge budget, and a pathetically bad script.
And I just thought of another one:
The Cast: Kurt Russell, Peter Fonda, Steve Buscemi, Pam Grier, Bruce Campbell, Stacy Keach
The Result: Escape From L.A. -
Battlefield Earth probably deserves mention. Travolta might not be the greatest actor ever, but the cast rounded out pretty well with Barry Pepper and Forrest Whitaker.
And I'll throw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull out there. Okay, I don't care at all for LaBoof, but Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Kate Blanchette, Ray Winstone and John Hurt should have been enough to carry any movie. (Well, except this one.)
And all 3 Star Wars prequels:
Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson, Liam Neeson, Ian McDiarmid. How do you mess this up? (Oh,wait...Lucas...) -
I can't check out the list yet (I'm at work), but one of my favorites hardly had any appearance by Batman:
Ra's Al Ghul was in Gotham for some reason, so Batman and Robin were racing to catch him in the act of whatever he was doing. They track him to the Gotham airport where he's getting ready to board a plane with someone he checked out of Arkham Asylum.
Ra's then recounts a story from the past where he encountered an aging bounty hunter by the name of Jonah Hex.
It's a great tale written by the one and only Joe R. Lansdale (Jonah Hex: Two Gun Mojo).
I won't spoil the ending, but it's awesome, if you haven't seen it. -
While I would never dictate how anybody plays the game, and while a petless MM is certainly POSSIBLE, I will point out there were people trying this some time ago and I can remember kicking a few of them off my teams because they were entirely worthless. Their damage is miniscule, they have almost no crowd control, and their buffs/debuffs are going to be better from a controller/corruptor/defender. And that's not counting the amount of time they spent faceplanted begging for an Awaken.
If you're going to solo or only inflict such folly upon your friends who understand what you're doing, go for it.
But if you're trying to do this to get on teams and contribute to that team, be prepared for people to be angry at you. -
Quote:So...if you were a pirate, it would be a pretty good place to start your career.I've read about plans for these "floating independent countries" before and the basic idea is most of them supposedly will only let you live there if you're worth like 100 million dollars or more. I suppose it'd be pretty easy to live in a "Libertarian Utopia" if you're already super-wealthy.
Who's with me? -
More suggestions:
Blast Hardcheese
Slab Bulkhead
Bold Bigflank
Splint Chesthair
Flint Ironstag
Bolt Van Der Huge
Thick McRunfast
Buff Drinklots
Fist Rockbone
Stump Beefnob
Bunk Slamchest
Smash Lampjaw
Punch Rockgroin
Buck Plankchest
Stump Junkman
Dirk Hardpec
Rip Steakface
Slate Slabrock
Crud Bonemeal
Brinck Hardmeat
Wip Slabcheek
Punch Sideiron
Gristle McThornbody
Slate Fistcrunch
Buff Hardback
Bob Johnson
Blast Thickneck
Crunch Buttsteak
Slab Squatthrust
Lump Beefbroth
Touch Rustrod
Reef Blastbody
Big McLargehuge
Smoke Manmuscle
Beat Punchbeef
Hack Blowfist
Roll Fizzlebeef -
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No. Cliches are cliches because they've been used too often that they become dull. There are plenty of ways to bring tension and drama to a pregnant woman beyond throwing something in the screenplay that's been done in just about every TV show or movie with a pregnant woman about to give birth. After watching 60 seconds of a TV show, I should not have been able to predict the next big plot twist. It's sloppy, lazy writing.
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Quote:Cliches? In this show? More likely than you think!
By the way, I can't wait to find out more about the alien overseers. I'm assuming they galaxy hop collecting resources and slaves, but that would be too cliche.
I turned on the show for about 10 minutes, and a woman was about to give birth and Dr. Blood Moongood (Good Bloodmoon? Moon Goodblood? Whatever) was there. I turned to a friend of mine and said, "I bet the baby is breach." Sure enough, a few minutes later, BINGO! Breach baby.
Ugh. EVERY SINGLE TV SHOW/MOVIE DOES THIS. Writers are horribly stuck in such conventions.
I didn't watch much more, as I really didn't know what was going on. -
Quote:No, it is illegal. Period. End of story. Having copies of things, digital or otherwise, that you did not purchase is piracy.It is, in fact, breach of contract at best. It is not illegal and, well, moral relativism allows a fair amount of flexibility on the "immoral" side of things but personally I wouldn't say that it is.
Now, is the FBI going to bust down your door and arrest you for it? Probably not.
Unless you're selling those file copies to other people, of course, then you're going to get noticed. -
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Quote:There are definitely ways to film large battles on the cheap. Keep most of the shots nice and tight on the actors and worry about a few larger establishing shots. LOTR went big at pretty much every moment it could, but they had a $300 million budget for about 10 hours of footage.Now, to be fair (and realistic), it's not going to be "LOTR" scale though. I even think one of the producers said that in the interview I saw. They have admitted that it will be a challenge to shoot, but they are committed and will find a way to make it right. And to those who haven't read it (there is no real spoiler here so don't worry) really there are only a couple of key points to the battle that are important to the story, so they won't have to completely break the bank for it. What does worry me though is some of the Essos story coming up in future installments. THAT will be challenging.
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Quote:The bigger question is whether or not HBO is willing to pony up the money to produce and do some justice to the more difficult scenes to get on the screen (i.e. big battles). I liked how they got around the battle scene from the first book, but you're not going to be able to cheap out like that for the rest of the series.
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Quote:Then she sounds like a smart businessperson.Are you an artist?
My wife has a photography business as a side project; the first thing she did was work up the contracts, which include details like who owns the rights to the pictures she takes when doing a gig.
But that isn't what happened in Kirby's case, so it's rather irrelevant. -
Quote:I work without a contract, too.Kirby was working without a contract.
That's getting shafted.
I get paid for things I do at my current place of employment.
Kirby did work for Marvel and created characters while receiving a weekly paycheck.
That is the very definition of work for hire, regardless of whether or not he had a contract.
And like I mentioned before, I have no doubt Marvel treated Kirby (and many other creators) like garbage, but that's not the issue in the legal dispute. -
Quote:But as stated above, the case was fundamentally different. If Kirby had solely created all these characters and THEN brought them to Marvel for Marvel to publish, this case would have had a similar outcome as the Superman case. Siegel & Schuster were not working for DC when they pitched Superman to the publisher, and even though they sold the copyright to DC, variances in our atrocious copyright laws have allowed the Siegel & Schuster heirs to get their legal victories.That's how I feel about the Superman case. Those sueing had no say at all in the creation of the character, and I'm pretty damn sure they weren't even born at the time so they are owed nothing..but still won.
On the other hand, Kirby was working for Marvel when he started drawing all of these characters.
That's work for hire.
Similarly, anything I create for the benefit of the company I'm currently working for doesn't become mine when I leave.
Now, you could go on and complain about how Marvel basically treated Jack Kirby and his legacy like garbage for a VERY LONG TIME and have a legitimate beef, but that still doesn't mean Kirby's heirs are due any money. -
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Quote:Caine doesn't really do much currently unless it's Christopher Nolan on the other end of the phone, but there was a time that guy would do anything for a paycheck (see also: Jaws IV: The Revenge). He was always a solid actor, even in bad roles.Christopher Lee is great for a character actor in a bit role. Liam Neeson was put on the front stage after Schindler's List and then did various degrees of declining nothing. Don't you DARE put Michael Caine in that same category (although now he does take a lot of jobs).
As far as Neeson goes, he's been hit or miss. I wouldn't call "Batman Begins" or "Taken" a varying degree of nothing. -
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For the Gamera episodes, this is not a bad thing. These are some of the very best MST3K has to offer. As the article says, the movies are perfect for ridicule AND the writers were just hitting their stride for high levels of hilarity. It also didn't hurt that these movies were previously used during the KTML season, so they got to take another crack at the material (with much better results).
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Probably doesn't say anything fans don't already know about the episodes, but it's some decent reading...
http://www.avclub.com/articles/mst3k-vs-gamera,59531/
I am giddy that this is coming out next week.