About Schmidt is another film that is all about getting to a single point, but it doesn't take a straight line there. You just wait and watch a mediocre movie for two hours, and then they try to throw a meaning at you at the end, to suggest it was a clever means of getting a point across.
But neither the journey, nor the "point" are very entertaining.
I own Following, Memento, Batman Begins, and his best work is probably The Prestige.
Mark Twain said the classics are something that everyone talks about, and no one reads. I bet a dollar to a doughnut you've never seen Citizen Kane. As a student of film, I've seen Citizen Kane.
It is horribly, horribly overrated. It goes no where. It really has no point. And in the age when very few films were made, it had little competition. In an age where thousands of movies are made each year today, there is more competition.
I don't care for your base, personal, and worthless insults regarding Japanese porn.
Memoirs of a Geisha isn't nearly as good as the novel, which focuses more on how torn she was between obligation and what she wanted, but the movie did still win a couple Oscars, so yes it must be utter trash.
Opinion is always subjective, but if you believe the greater majority (let's say 2/3?) of those movies are utter crap, I will suggest that you have no taste in movies. I will support my argument with the fact that all of those movies made SEVERAL "Best of 2005" lists, and had the highest scores from movie goes on Rotten Tomatoes.
And given that I picked all those movies from lists of movies released in 2005, I'm pretty sure those were all last year.
A British film, and based on existing characters; not a sequel as such, but not entirely original either."
It was an original film. But I will concede it is British.
"War of the Worlds
Remake of a film based on a book."
No one criticized the radio play for being "unoriginal". Adapting material to a new medium is not an easy thing to do. Either way, the 2005 version is completely different from any previous movie version, the radio play, and the book. The characters and story of the movie are completely original. The only things pulled from the source material is the concept that Martians invade, and are stopped by microbes. But the book, previous movies, and radio drama deal with the subject on a much larger scale. This movie is a small, personal tale.
"House of Flying Daggers
Was that a Hollywood film? (Genuine question)"
No.
"Match Point
I thought this was British, but could be wrong."
Hollywood. This was Woody Allen, and if you believe the critics, his best work in years.
"Chronicles of Narnia
Remake."
Adaptation, but there wasn't a previous Narnia movie that I'm aware of.
Fair enough. I'm sure I made a number of omissions of good movies.
For instance, this year Edmund may be one of the best movies of the year, but no one has seen it.
I did not attempt to put together a definitive list, but merely to point out that despite all the retreads and crap, there are good movies that come out as well.
I don't know exactly where your tastes in movies lie, but last year alone we had:
Munich Capote Crash Brokeback Mountain Murderball Wallace and Grommit Constant Gardener Squid and the Whale History of Violence Good Night, and Good Luck Hustle and Flow The New World Walk the Line Jarhead King Kong Sin City The Devil's Rejects Pride and Prejudice Hotel Rwanda March of the Penguins War of the Worlds Episode III (before you bitch, it was easily the best of the prequels) Mirrormask Batman Begins Broken Flowers House of Flying Daggers Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Syriana Layer Cake Match Point Goblet of Fire Cache Cinderella Man 40 Year Old Virgin Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Serenity The Upside of Anger Shopgirl Chronicles of Narnia Wedding Crashers Corpse Bride Memoirs of a Geisha Proof Millions
As far as I'm concerned, Citizen Kane is horribly overrated. You spotted me three good movies in the entire history of mankind, and I gave you over 40 that came out last year alone.
It has been speculated there are only something like 38 plots.
Let's take "Revenge" as a plot. With it, you have "Revenge of the Nerds", "Lethal Weapon 2", "Moby Dick" and "The Count of Monte Cristo" as a few examples.
With each plot you get to choose a medium, a style, a setting, individual characters, how that plot is resolved, whether or not to involve other plot elements as well, etc.
Truly there are only a small handful number of unique story ideas, but there are many ways to tell a story.
The original article was linked here on Slashdot some time ago.
Google's proposed standard was a 12-volt only power supply, with no 5 volt lines or any other such sillyness. There were a bunch of details I forget, but it was more than simply suggesting people buy higher quality power supplies. It did involve a significant redesign on hower PSU's and motherboards work in computers.
It claimed that it would save billions in dollars in electricity everyday however.
In an company traded publicly, they fear the quarterly P/L statements for fear that investors will dump them.
Investors don't always know why profits are down this quarter. They don't know that money the company is investing today will save them big down the road. They just want to see profits up every quarter.
Trust me, I had this arguement in the corporate world many a time.
Microsoft is a multi-headed beast. I believe the company is still doing some pretty rotten things to be sure, but it is worth nothing that certain portions of the company are behaving in a very surprisingly un-evil fashion.
Yet Gates was once a man who did not believe in charity, and now he is Time's Man of the Year for his charity. Warren Buffet gave most of his wealth up to the Gates foundation.
Microsoft is embracing open-source, working on filters to save in OpenDocumentFormat, etc.
Microsoft was without a doubt, evil. I believe that Microsoft is becoming considerably less evil, perhaps in an attempt to copy-cat Google's success.
Actually 5 minute Google searches will prove you dead wrong.
Try a non-partisan fact-based site like fact-check.org
1 - WMD were in fact found. In addition, training manuals, storage facilities and containers for vastly more WMD were found. This is despite the fact that we gave them plenty of advanced warning and then watched trucks roll from Iraq into Syria, no doubt carrying the bulk of the WMD. Intelligence agencies from around the world all stated they believed WMD were being produced and purchased, including every major Democrat leader in the US. Again, Clinton backed Bush in this regard claiming one reason we found so little is that Clinton believes he destroyed a good chunk of the WMD's when he bombed Iraq (without permission from Congress or the UN).
2 - Bush is not all about big oil. Bush immediately demanded stricter clean water and clean air requirements that cost big oil tons of money. Clinton gets credit for this in certain circles because he promised to pass the legislation but never did in his 8 years. Bush passed it through right away by making a compromise. Bush also created major tax breaks for hybrid owners, fining auto-manufacturers for not having hybrids on the road right away, put record dollars into fuel-cell research, and attempted to get Congress to open up the Alaskan-pipeline more. If you paid attention to actual news you might have heard Bush say over and over again for six solid years that he wants the country off foreign oil. He has spent more money on alternate fuel research than any president in history.
3 - Two weeks before we went into Iraq, Bush gave a speech to the country. I watched it in it's entirety. I'm guessing you didn't. He stated we had legal reason due to the 70 security council resolutions they broke, and cited a recent resolution demanding immediate cooperation or else. He also stated the 1991 terms demanded they comply, or military action was reauthorized. He spoke of the 30 million Iraqi people whose lives were in danger. He never once mentioned oil. He never stated that Iraq had nukes that could hit the US, or any such non-sense. The reality is the media and many political-pundits stated that Bush lied to get us there and he made up the humanitarian aspect after the fact. That simply isn't true. He did mention that going after Iraq was part of the war on terror, and those people heard "Saddam is directly linked to 9/11" etc. Saddam did directly fund terrorists however, and people overlook that. He did practice genocide, and people overlook that.
Apparently you're willing to condone those things in the name of maintaining party lines.
Again, I'm very pro civil-liberties, and I don't care for most of Bush's policies. But blind-partisan politics with no basis in actual fact really tick me off.
They have no qualms of people seeing the code, submitting code, compiling on their own, etc? They want to port to all systems, etc.
There seems to be a huge void here. We need a license that covers this scenario and specifically prevents unauthorized forks. Change the code on your own machine. Submit upstream if you wish, but you can't distribute unofficial builds, or fork the code.
If such a license existed, it might be considerably more likely to see more open-source codecs, open sourced Flash players, plugins, video drivers, etc.
Sun has said forever that the code is basically out there already, and they had no qualm making it open-sourced over than the fork issue, and the only reason for this lengthy delay was coming up with an appropriate license. So why just settle on the GPL?
Someone said free speech exists in any form because you get in trouble for screaming fire in a crowded movie theater.
I have explained that you do have full freedom of speech. For instance, you just made an anti-government statement. You take for granted that in many places people don't have that freedom.
That does not however remove consequences for such statements.
Not that it matters, but I hate most Republican policies, and I don't care for Bush. However I believe it to be a major lie to suggest that we went to war to hand Iraq over to oil companies.
Fact - Saddam attempted to practice genocide on his own people and drove Kurds to live in mountains for fear of their own lives. Fact - Saddam broke UN Security Council Resolutions some 70 times, and the terms of the peace accord in 1991 called for complete duplicity. Fact - 30 million people's lives were in danger so long as Saddam was in charge. Fact - When Clinton was president he bombed Iraq for building WMA, and be bombed Sudan for building WMA for Iraq. Clinton, Kerry, Gore and every single Democrat leader spoke out against Iraq, citing the need to go into Iraq.
Bush also stated that we wouldn't steal a single drop of oil, and immediately formed an oil welfare program, where every citizen in that country benefited from every drop sold. Did soldiers make it a priority to protect oil fields? Yes. Along the same lines, after we took out Germany, we made it a priority to protect their economy and we helped them rebuild car factories. After WWII, we also helped rebuild in Japan. In neither instance did we make those countries puppet governments, or secretly control their economies. People constantly suggest that the US controls every country where we have disposed or placed a leader, but if that were the case, we would have controlled Saddam whom we put in power in the first place.
If you can find a single piece of credible evidence that suggests we have stolen a single drop of oil, I'd like to see it. Otherwise I'd kindly ask to you to research such broad accusations in the future before you make them.
"it's as if you are just being contrarian for the sake of creating friction where there is none"
The initial point of debate here is that free speech doesn't exist at all, which I find silly. Fred Phelps and his crew are protesting military funerals with signs saying "Thank God for IEDs".
If the Government felt like suspending freedom of speech when it suited them, or when it hurt another, they would surely do it is this case. The compromise is that Fred Phelps retains all first amendment rights to express his horrid opinions, even in public, but he must do it a safe distance from the funeral itself.
You have the freedom to say anything in the world, but that does not absolve you of consequence. You confuse the two. If I lie to you, and defraud you of money, I should be punished. That does not mean my freedom of speech is abridged.
You seem to suggest that this entitles you to drive drunk and kill people. I suggest that you in fact are the one being a contrarian and using hyperbole in place of relevant analogies.
Even if you do your best to act responsibly, your must be first accountable to yourself, and your family. Often differing virtues are in conflict with one another, and you must choose the lesser of varied evils. Even if we all have good intentions, there will be victims and conflict in society. To pretend that a model exists where conflict doesn't is fallacy. It is possible to hope that all conflict is resolved in a non-violent manner, but even that is stretching it.
You can say anything you want. If it can be substantially proven that you inflicted quantifiable harm on another, you can be held accountable for that.
For instance, if I published a full-page ad in your local paper calling you a pedophile, I would have the full legal right to do so. If you could demonstrate that I caused you financial losses from such a thing, and damages, then I could be sued for libel.
Slashdot Mirror
About Schmidt is another film that is all about getting to a single point, but it doesn't take a straight line there. You just wait and watch a mediocre movie for two hours, and then they try to throw a meaning at you at the end, to suggest it was a clever means of getting a point across.
But neither the journey, nor the "point" are very entertaining.
Christopher Nolan hasn't made a bad film.
I own Following, Memento, Batman Begins, and his best work is probably The Prestige.
Mark Twain said the classics are something that everyone talks about, and no one reads. I bet a dollar to a doughnut you've never seen Citizen Kane. As a student of film, I've seen Citizen Kane.
It is horribly, horribly overrated. It goes no where. It really has no point. And in the age when very few films were made, it had little competition. In an age where thousands of movies are made each year today, there is more competition.
I don't care for your base, personal, and worthless insults regarding Japanese porn.
Memoirs of a Geisha isn't nearly as good as the novel, which focuses more on how torn she was between obligation and what she wanted, but the movie did still win a couple Oscars, so yes it must be utter trash.
Opinion is always subjective, but if you believe the greater majority (let's say 2/3?) of those movies are utter crap, I will suggest that you have no taste in movies. I will support my argument with the fact that all of those movies made SEVERAL "Best of 2005" lists, and had the highest scores from movie goes on Rotten Tomatoes.
And given that I picked all those movies from lists of movies released in 2005, I'm pretty sure those were all last year.
"Wallace and Grommit
A British film, and based on existing characters; not a sequel as such, but not entirely original either."
It was an original film. But I will concede it is British.
"War of the Worlds
Remake of a film based on a book."
No one criticized the radio play for being "unoriginal". Adapting material to a new medium is not an easy thing to do. Either way, the 2005 version is completely different from any previous movie version, the radio play, and the book. The characters and story of the movie are completely original. The only things pulled from the source material is the concept that Martians invade, and are stopped by microbes. But the book, previous movies, and radio drama deal with the subject on a much larger scale. This movie is a small, personal tale.
"House of Flying Daggers
Was that a Hollywood film? (Genuine question)"
No.
"Match Point
I thought this was British, but could be wrong."
Hollywood. This was Woody Allen, and if you believe the critics, his best work in years.
"Chronicles of Narnia
Remake."
Adaptation, but there wasn't a previous Narnia movie that I'm aware of.
I am a huge film geek, and I only saw 1/3 to 1/2 of those. Having a kid and being broke limits your ability to see movies sadly.
I Google'd for critics Top Ten Films of 2005 lists, and checked Rotten Tomato scores to pick what is arguably the best films of 2005.
Fair enough. I'm sure I made a number of omissions of good movies.
For instance, this year Edmund may be one of the best movies of the year, but no one has seen it.
I did not attempt to put together a definitive list, but merely to point out that despite all the retreads and crap, there are good movies that come out as well.
And oh, Happy Scrappy Hero Pup!
(your random Kevin Smith reference for the day!)
I didn't list every movie that came out last year. I listed those that were universally hailed as good movies by all critics and fans alike last year.
There aren't any truly bad movies on that list.
Now you're just being obstinate.
I don't know exactly where your tastes in movies lie, but last year alone we had:
Munich
Capote
Crash
Brokeback Mountain
Murderball
Wallace and Grommit
Constant Gardener
Squid and the Whale
History of Violence
Good Night, and Good Luck
Hustle and Flow
The New World
Walk the Line
Jarhead
King Kong
Sin City
The Devil's Rejects
Pride and Prejudice
Hotel Rwanda
March of the Penguins
War of the Worlds
Episode III (before you bitch, it was easily the best of the prequels)
Mirrormask
Batman Begins
Broken Flowers
House of Flying Daggers
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Syriana
Layer Cake
Match Point
Goblet of Fire
Cache
Cinderella Man
40 Year Old Virgin
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Serenity
The Upside of Anger
Shopgirl
Chronicles of Narnia
Wedding Crashers
Corpse Bride
Memoirs of a Geisha
Proof
Millions
As far as I'm concerned, Citizen Kane is horribly overrated. You spotted me three good movies in the entire history of mankind, and I gave you over 40 that came out last year alone.
Truly no one makes good movies anymore.
It has been speculated there are only something like 38 plots.
Let's take "Revenge" as a plot. With it, you have "Revenge of the Nerds", "Lethal Weapon 2", "Moby Dick" and "The Count of Monte Cristo" as a few examples.
With each plot you get to choose a medium, a style, a setting, individual characters, how that plot is resolved, whether or not to involve other plot elements as well, etc.
Truly there are only a small handful number of unique story ideas, but there are many ways to tell a story.
The original article was linked here on Slashdot some time ago.
Google's proposed standard was a 12-volt only power supply, with no 5 volt lines or any other such sillyness. There were a bunch of details I forget, but it was more than simply suggesting people buy higher quality power supplies. It did involve a significant redesign on hower PSU's and motherboards work in computers.
It claimed that it would save billions in dollars in electricity everyday however.
But who is interested in that?
In an company traded publicly, they fear the quarterly P/L statements for fear that investors will dump them.
Investors don't always know why profits are down this quarter. They don't know that money the company is investing today will save them big down the road. They just want to see profits up every quarter.
Trust me, I had this arguement in the corporate world many a time.
Microsoft is a multi-headed beast. I believe the company is still doing some pretty rotten things to be sure, but it is worth nothing that certain portions of the company are behaving in a very surprisingly un-evil fashion.
I've seen server rooms that run off DC and have substantial power savings.
Google suggested a new standard for ATX power supplies that is supposed to have again, substantial power savings.
There are solutions out there without a doubt. Big businesses would save money on their bills.
So why is no one interested in saving money?
Bueller? Bueller?
Without a doubt Microsoft has had a jaded past.
Yet Gates was once a man who did not believe in charity, and now he is Time's Man of the Year for his charity. Warren Buffet gave most of his wealth up to the Gates foundation.
Microsoft is embracing open-source, working on filters to save in OpenDocumentFormat, etc.
Microsoft was without a doubt, evil. I believe that Microsoft is becoming considerably less evil, perhaps in an attempt to copy-cat Google's success.
Actually 5 minute Google searches will prove you dead wrong.
Try a non-partisan fact-based site like fact-check.org
1 - WMD were in fact found. In addition, training manuals, storage facilities and containers for vastly more WMD were found. This is despite the fact that we gave them plenty of advanced warning and then watched trucks roll from Iraq into Syria, no doubt carrying the bulk of the WMD. Intelligence agencies from around the world all stated they believed WMD were being produced and purchased, including every major Democrat leader in the US. Again, Clinton backed Bush in this regard claiming one reason we found so little is that Clinton believes he destroyed a good chunk of the WMD's when he bombed Iraq (without permission from Congress or the UN).
2 - Bush is not all about big oil. Bush immediately demanded stricter clean water and clean air requirements that cost big oil tons of money. Clinton gets credit for this in certain circles because he promised to pass the legislation but never did in his 8 years. Bush passed it through right away by making a compromise. Bush also created major tax breaks for hybrid owners, fining auto-manufacturers for not having hybrids on the road right away, put record dollars into fuel-cell research, and attempted to get Congress to open up the Alaskan-pipeline more. If you paid attention to actual news you might have heard Bush say over and over again for six solid years that he wants the country off foreign oil. He has spent more money on alternate fuel research than any president in history.
3 - Two weeks before we went into Iraq, Bush gave a speech to the country. I watched it in it's entirety. I'm guessing you didn't. He stated we had legal reason due to the 70 security council resolutions they broke, and cited a recent resolution demanding immediate cooperation or else. He also stated the 1991 terms demanded they comply, or military action was reauthorized. He spoke of the 30 million Iraqi people whose lives were in danger. He never once mentioned oil. He never stated that Iraq had nukes that could hit the US, or any such non-sense. The reality is the media and many political-pundits stated that Bush lied to get us there and he made up the humanitarian aspect after the fact. That simply isn't true. He did mention that going after Iraq was part of the war on terror, and those people heard "Saddam is directly linked to 9/11" etc. Saddam did directly fund terrorists however, and people overlook that. He did practice genocide, and people overlook that.
Apparently you're willing to condone those things in the name of maintaining party lines.
Again, I'm very pro civil-liberties, and I don't care for most of Bush's policies. But blind-partisan politics with no basis in actual fact really tick me off.
Forks of major projects are rare?
And I've never once heard Sun talk about open-sourcing without mentioning their fear of forking.
Their big concern is forking, right?
They have no qualms of people seeing the code, submitting code, compiling on their own, etc? They want to port to all systems, etc.
There seems to be a huge void here. We need a license that covers this scenario and specifically prevents unauthorized forks. Change the code on your own machine. Submit upstream if you wish, but you can't distribute unofficial builds, or fork the code.
If such a license existed, it might be considerably more likely to see more open-source codecs, open sourced Flash players, plugins, video drivers, etc.
Sun has said forever that the code is basically out there already, and they had no qualm making it open-sourced over than the fork issue, and the only reason for this lengthy delay was coming up with an appropriate license. So why just settle on the GPL?
I'm confused.
Thank you. I took it for granted that he wasn't a pedophile in my example.
I don't think you follow.
Someone said free speech exists in any form because you get in trouble for screaming fire in a crowded movie theater.
I have explained that you do have full freedom of speech. For instance, you just made an anti-government statement. You take for granted that in many places people don't have that freedom.
That does not however remove consequences for such statements.
Not that it matters, but I hate most Republican policies, and I don't care for Bush. However I believe it to be a major lie to suggest that we went to war to hand Iraq over to oil companies.
Fact - Saddam attempted to practice genocide on his own people and drove Kurds to live in mountains for fear of their own lives.
Fact - Saddam broke UN Security Council Resolutions some 70 times, and the terms of the peace accord in 1991 called for complete duplicity.
Fact - 30 million people's lives were in danger so long as Saddam was in charge.
Fact - When Clinton was president he bombed Iraq for building WMA, and be bombed Sudan for building WMA for Iraq. Clinton, Kerry, Gore and every single Democrat leader spoke out against Iraq, citing the need to go into Iraq.
Bush also stated that we wouldn't steal a single drop of oil, and immediately formed an oil welfare program, where every citizen in that country benefited from every drop sold. Did soldiers make it a priority to protect oil fields? Yes. Along the same lines, after we took out Germany, we made it a priority to protect their economy and we helped them rebuild car factories. After WWII, we also helped rebuild in Japan. In neither instance did we make those countries puppet governments, or secretly control their economies. People constantly suggest that the US controls every country where we have disposed or placed a leader, but if that were the case, we would have controlled Saddam whom we put in power in the first place.
If you can find a single piece of credible evidence that suggests we have stolen a single drop of oil, I'd like to see it. Otherwise I'd kindly ask to you to research such broad accusations in the future before you make them.
"it's as if you are just being contrarian for the sake of creating friction where there is none"
The initial point of debate here is that free speech doesn't exist at all, which I find silly. Fred Phelps and his crew are protesting military funerals with signs saying "Thank God for IEDs".
If the Government felt like suspending freedom of speech when it suited them, or when it hurt another, they would surely do it is this case. The compromise is that Fred Phelps retains all first amendment rights to express his horrid opinions, even in public, but he must do it a safe distance from the funeral itself.
You have the freedom to say anything in the world, but that does not absolve you of consequence. You confuse the two. If I lie to you, and defraud you of money, I should be punished. That does not mean my freedom of speech is abridged.
You seem to suggest that this entitles you to drive drunk and kill people. I suggest that you in fact are the one being a contrarian and using hyperbole in place of relevant analogies.
Even if you do your best to act responsibly, your must be first accountable to yourself, and your family. Often differing virtues are in conflict with one another, and you must choose the lesser of varied evils. Even if we all have good intentions, there will be victims and conflict in society. To pretend that a model exists where conflict doesn't is fallacy. It is possible to hope that all conflict is resolved in a non-violent manner, but even that is stretching it.
Flawed analogy.
By taking out an ad in the paper, I have not broken the law because freedom of speech is protected. You can sue in a civil court for libel.
By driving drunk, you have broken the law the second you turn on the ignition. And depending on which half of my family you run over, I might not sue!
Okay, I'm going to hell.
You can say anything you want. If it can be substantially proven that you inflicted quantifiable harm on another, you can be held accountable for that.
For instance, if I published a full-page ad in your local paper calling you a pedophile, I would have the full legal right to do so. If you could demonstrate that I caused you financial losses from such a thing, and damages, then I could be sued for libel.
And yet when Sudan tried to hand Bin Laden over, Clinton refused saying we didn't have evidence to convict him.