I see. So we've now determined that there is some sort of objective standard for what qualifies something as "a mess"? What, pray tell, is the objective definition by which we may know whether or not something is a mess?
There was no "plot", there was a loose premise and a lot of stupid one-liners and a couple fight scenes to support it. The motivation is given to us as an axiom - not to be questioned or explained, he just sees her, and wants her. She's an empty shell on rollerblades, and he's an empty shell with a gay roommate. The characters are paper-thin, the motivations are unquestionable and unexplained, and the plot appears to be a "wouldn't it be funny if everything was a video game" premise which is neither funny, nor well-developed.
Baking soda can make or break a cake, just as editing can make or break a movie.
Really, and when's the last time you ate a cake and said, "Boy, that would've been a lousy cake if they hadn't used Arm & Hammer Baking Soda, and had instead opted for Bob's Red Mill Baking Soda"? A minor ingredient is not what makes the cake remarkable, it's the skill of the baker and his assistants that makes the cake remarkable. Same with editing - if the best compliment you can think of for a movie is "wow, great editing," then the movie is probably terrible. Editing enhances a good film, it does not redeem a lousy one.
"An ad hominem (Latin: "to the man"), also known as argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to link the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise."
In other words: If I were trying to dismiss your concerns by calling you a one trick pony, that would be an ad hominem argument.
Since I have simply observed that all you do is flog the same points with poor grammar and rambling and incoherent walls of text, that is not an ad hominem argument. It is simply observing the fact that that is all you do, and it doesn't matter whether your points are relevant or not, because you do such a horrible job of FORMULATING them that nobody can even tell what your point is. You're just cluttering up Slashdot with pointless self-promotion.
Name calling is, technically speaking, name calling: It is not a logical fallacy to call you a self-aggrandizing ass, it is simply an observation of your behavior, followed by me stating my opinion of it.
I was allowing for the possibility that the movie could closely retell the comic, which might, to a fan of the comic, make the movie "good".
If you thought the movie wasn't funny or entertaining, that's one thing.
It was supposed to be a funny and entertaining movie. It failed to amuse or entertain me. I'd say that's pretty much the definition of a "mess". I never claimed that my opinion of the movie was some sort of universal truth, I merely submitted that it was no surprise to me that it was a failure, precisely because it was a mess - it wasn't funny, it didn't entertain, about the only thing I can say in its defense is that it *might* have hewn closely to the comic version, which I could see as a defense of the movie to people who were also fans of the comic.
the script didn't have any major plot holes, and the editing, music, and acting were fine.
"no major plot holes"? The whole thing was a loosely collected series of vignettes, loosely related to one another because "some slacker" really wants to bang "some rollerblade chick." We're not given any reason or motivation for this, other than that she has cool slacker pigtails or something. There *was* no plot. As far as editing: I no more enjoy a movie for the quality of its editing than I enjoy a cake because the baker used a particular brand of baking soda. My issue with Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was not that it had "one flaw or another," it's that its sum total was one giant glaring flaw. It was intended to amuse and to entertain, and it failed to do so. If you enjoyed it, great, watch it on loop. I thought it was a superficial, uninteresting mess, and I will continue describing it as "a mess."
An ad hominem attack is the logical fallacy of using negative statements about your opponent to discredit their arguments.
As I said, "APK is a psychotic. Therefore his points are wrong." Is an ad hominem attack. And it is a fallacy, because whether or not you are a psychotic isn't relevant to whether or not your argument holds water.
Calling you a 1-trick pony is an observation of your behavior: You flog the same snippets of text repeatedly with a rambling mish-mash of capital letters, bold typefaces, and other assorted walls of text. In other words - you make arguments that are incomprehensible to the reader, and only serve to undermine the strength of any point you try to make.
It's not an ad hominem attack, you fool. An ad hominem attack would take this form:
"APK is an unstable psychotic. We may therefore conclude that all of his points are invalid."
I am asking you to formulate a coherent point, rather than your rambling mess of capitals, emphatic text, and "PS" addenda, which is both physically painful to read, and logically incoherent.
It was a mess. A bunch of unlikable slackers tossing one-liners at one another that are neither funny, nor insightful - the movie was a comic book in video form. Now, perhaps that counts as high praise to someone who enjoyed the comics - I'd much rather see an interesting story, and the movie lacked that in its entirety. I haven't read the comics, though I'm aware of them - if the movies are a faithful representation of the comics, I suspect I wouldn't much care for them, either.
Notable exceptions: Anna Kendrick as the wise-old younger sister, Stacy, and Ellen Wong in the role of Knives Chau - they both had some good moments. The rest just struck me as self-absorbed wanking, trying too hard to be funny, with a few Tekken-style fight scenes mixed in.
And you're right, the typecast of the role was perfect for Michael Cera - it just wasn't a very good role.
According to Wikipedia, the budget was 85-90 million, and 60 million "after tax rebates". I agree - it certainly didn't look like it should have taken 60, much less 90 million to make.
Indeed, but the point was that sitting around bemoaning how "nobody's producing stuff WE want to watch" didn't create those fan-produced Serenity films, or District 9.
If you want to find and produce smart, well-written, low-budget films... you can do so. Nobody's stopping you, but if you want to make a business out of it, you have to pay attention to your bottom line - which means, keep your budgets small, or you'd better have a hell of a story that people are going to want to see despite the lack of big-name stars and big-budget effects.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was a failure. And I'll tell you why: the movie was a fucking mess about an early-20's slacker trying to win a date with another early-20's slacker, by defeating her evil ex-boyfriends, Tekken style. It had all of the challenging emotional complexity and interesting storyline of a bowl of overcooked oatmeal. Hooray, an unlikable character, struggling to get together with another unlikable character. Who gives a shit?
Here's the super-secret plan for bringing that movie to market: 1) Hire Michael Cera. 2) Tell a bunch of basement dwelling losers who think this is "fucking real adult life, man" that you've cast Michael Cera. 3) Make a shitty movie with Michael Cera in it. 4) Profit!
It may be entertaining as a humorous comic - excuse me, "Serious Graphic Novel for Adults With Serious Comedic Value." But the entire story, and the movie, are juvenile. There is nothing interesting, challenging, or even all that humorous once you get past Cera's trademark bewildered hangdog expression and awkwardly deadpan delivery. That is why it was a failure, and why it deserved to be.
There are plenty of adult-themed movies that are enjoyable and entertaining to watch. They just don't happen to fit into the "fantasy/comic-based" category.
Incendies is a recent one that would appear to fit all of your requirements, except the events don't happen in a spaceship.
I don't think she's ever had the body for the mandatory nude scene. And I say this will all due respect to her acting and singing talents: Ms. Jovovich desperately needs a couple cheeseburgers.
Sure you can. Band together with a few thousand of your Slashdot compatriots, and each of you put a couple thousand into funding the movie that satisfied your vision. You don't need a studio to write a script, hire actors, and film.
Or, offer to spend a LOT more than $15 per person on tickets, and somebody will probably make the film you want.
If there's money to be made in producing "the movie you want," then somebody can be convinced to produce it. If it's not a popular enough concept to make a profit, then I guess you're stuck with your imagination and a book.
but overall that talent would be better spent making some new characters, story and setting. And intellectual property laws won't get in the way of that either.
Problem with that is that the studios creating the stuff are looking for "good bets" - and a good bet is something that lots of people know and love already. Why make something new, when several generations of men have grown up following the adventures of Batman and Superman?
The remake mentality is primarily tied to minimizing business risks. If somebody was asking me to bet 200 million dollars on a single film, I'd want as many risks minimized as possible, too... this means knowing that the film has a built in appeal, maybe signing up a couple of high-profile stars to help float it... and before you know it, your character-driven piece with snappy dialogue is a $75 million behemoth with 3 blockbuster stars, 20 locations, and a production crew of hundreds.
Man, I want you to come talk to my boss and tell him that 42 seconds isn't an "outage of any length."
When you work with market data and trading systems, a "significant outage" is anything with time > 0 that your functionality is unavailable. Business critical applications are, susprisingly, considered critical to the operation of the business.
This is why you have hot-spare High Availability / Disaster Recovery configurations, robust monitoring and load balancing, and a team of operations staff standing by to respond at the first sign of a problem. And that's also why it costs tens of millions of dollars to design, build, test and deploy a system like this, despite the script jockeys' assertions that "LOL 6 guys and 6 months could build that."
Slashdot Mirror
I see. So we've now determined that there is some sort of objective standard for what qualifies something as "a mess"? What, pray tell, is the objective definition by which we may know whether or not something is a mess?
There was no "plot", there was a loose premise and a lot of stupid one-liners and a couple fight scenes to support it. The motivation is given to us as an axiom - not to be questioned or explained, he just sees her, and wants her. She's an empty shell on rollerblades, and he's an empty shell with a gay roommate. The characters are paper-thin, the motivations are unquestionable and unexplained, and the plot appears to be a "wouldn't it be funny if everything was a video game" premise which is neither funny, nor well-developed.
Really, and when's the last time you ate a cake and said, "Boy, that would've been a lousy cake if they hadn't used Arm & Hammer Baking Soda, and had instead opted for Bob's Red Mill Baking Soda"? A minor ingredient is not what makes the cake remarkable, it's the skill of the baker and his assistants that makes the cake remarkable. Same with editing - if the best compliment you can think of for a movie is "wow, great editing," then the movie is probably terrible. Editing enhances a good film, it does not redeem a lousy one.
From your own link:
"An ad hominem (Latin: "to the man"), also known as argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to link the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise."
In other words: If I were trying to dismiss your concerns by calling you a one trick pony, that would be an ad hominem argument.
Since I have simply observed that all you do is flog the same points with poor grammar and rambling and incoherent walls of text, that is not an ad hominem argument. It is simply observing the fact that that is all you do, and it doesn't matter whether your points are relevant or not, because you do such a horrible job of FORMULATING them that nobody can even tell what your point is. You're just cluttering up Slashdot with pointless self-promotion.
Name calling is, technically speaking, name calling: It is not a logical fallacy to call you a self-aggrandizing ass, it is simply an observation of your behavior, followed by me stating my opinion of it.
I was allowing for the possibility that the movie could closely retell the comic, which might, to a fan of the comic, make the movie "good".
It was supposed to be a funny and entertaining movie. It failed to amuse or entertain me. I'd say that's pretty much the definition of a "mess". I never claimed that my opinion of the movie was some sort of universal truth, I merely submitted that it was no surprise to me that it was a failure, precisely because it was a mess - it wasn't funny, it didn't entertain, about the only thing I can say in its defense is that it *might* have hewn closely to the comic version, which I could see as a defense of the movie to people who were also fans of the comic.
"no major plot holes"? The whole thing was a loosely collected series of vignettes, loosely related to one another because "some slacker" really wants to bang "some rollerblade chick." We're not given any reason or motivation for this, other than that she has cool slacker pigtails or something. There *was* no plot. As far as editing: I no more enjoy a movie for the quality of its editing than I enjoy a cake because the baker used a particular brand of baking soda. My issue with Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was not that it had "one flaw or another," it's that its sum total was one giant glaring flaw. It was intended to amuse and to entertain, and it failed to do so. If you enjoyed it, great, watch it on loop. I thought it was a superficial, uninteresting mess, and I will continue describing it as "a mess."
An ad hominem attack is the logical fallacy of using negative statements about your opponent to discredit their arguments.
As I said, "APK is a psychotic. Therefore his points are wrong." Is an ad hominem attack. And it is a fallacy, because whether or not you are a psychotic isn't relevant to whether or not your argument holds water.
Calling you a 1-trick pony is an observation of your behavior: You flog the same snippets of text repeatedly with a rambling mish-mash of capital letters, bold typefaces, and other assorted walls of text. In other words - you make arguments that are incomprehensible to the reader, and only serve to undermine the strength of any point you try to make.
It's not an ad hominem attack, you fool. An ad hominem attack would take this form:
"APK is an unstable psychotic. We may therefore conclude that all of his points are invalid."
I am asking you to formulate a coherent point, rather than your rambling mess of capitals, emphatic text, and "PS" addenda, which is both physically painful to read, and logically incoherent.
Damn. You have uncovered my secret: I'm part of Linus Torvalds' secret Linux Astroturf Brigade.
You win twelve internets for your insight.
It was a mess. A bunch of unlikable slackers tossing one-liners at one another that are neither funny, nor insightful - the movie was a comic book in video form. Now, perhaps that counts as high praise to someone who enjoyed the comics - I'd much rather see an interesting story, and the movie lacked that in its entirety. I haven't read the comics, though I'm aware of them - if the movies are a faithful representation of the comics, I suspect I wouldn't much care for them, either.
Notable exceptions: Anna Kendrick as the wise-old younger sister, Stacy, and Ellen Wong in the role of Knives Chau - they both had some good moments. The rest just struck me as self-absorbed wanking, trying too hard to be funny, with a few Tekken-style fight scenes mixed in.
And you're right, the typecast of the role was perfect for Michael Cera - it just wasn't a very good role.
According to Wikipedia, the budget was 85-90 million, and 60 million "after tax rebates". I agree - it certainly didn't look like it should have taken 60, much less 90 million to make.
Maybe the stars needed lots of blow.
Indeed, but the point was that sitting around bemoaning how "nobody's producing stuff WE want to watch" didn't create those fan-produced Serenity films, or District 9.
If you want to find and produce smart, well-written, low-budget films... you can do so. Nobody's stopping you, but if you want to make a business out of it, you have to pay attention to your bottom line - which means, keep your budgets small, or you'd better have a hell of a story that people are going to want to see despite the lack of big-name stars and big-budget effects.
tl;dr. Please try formulating a coherent point before posting.
Oh APK, you are amazing.
You know, I might pay $15 to see a movie where that happens.
I'm going to blow your mind with three little words: ROGER RABBIT REBOOT.
How's that for outside-the-box thinking in cinematography? I'm sure to get the best picture nod in 2012.
Now you better not take my idea and make a billion billion billion dollars off it. I'll sue, seriously.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was a failure. And I'll tell you why: the movie was a fucking mess about an early-20's slacker trying to win a date with another early-20's slacker, by defeating her evil ex-boyfriends, Tekken style. It had all of the challenging emotional complexity and interesting storyline of a bowl of overcooked oatmeal. Hooray, an unlikable character, struggling to get together with another unlikable character. Who gives a shit?
Here's the super-secret plan for bringing that movie to market:
1) Hire Michael Cera.
2) Tell a bunch of basement dwelling losers who think this is "fucking real adult life, man" that you've cast Michael Cera.
3) Make a shitty movie with Michael Cera in it.
4) Profit!
It may be entertaining as a humorous comic - excuse me, "Serious Graphic Novel for Adults With Serious Comedic Value." But the entire story, and the movie, are juvenile. There is nothing interesting, challenging, or even all that humorous once you get past Cera's trademark bewildered hangdog expression and awkwardly deadpan delivery. That is why it was a failure, and why it deserved to be.
There are plenty of adult-themed movies that are enjoyable and entertaining to watch. They just don't happen to fit into the "fantasy/comic-based" category.
Incendies is a recent one that would appear to fit all of your requirements, except the events don't happen in a spaceship.
I don't think she's ever had the body for the mandatory nude scene. And I say this will all due respect to her acting and singing talents: Ms. Jovovich desperately needs a couple cheeseburgers.
Sure you can. Band together with a few thousand of your Slashdot compatriots, and each of you put a couple thousand into funding the movie that satisfied your vision. You don't need a studio to write a script, hire actors, and film.
Or, offer to spend a LOT more than $15 per person on tickets, and somebody will probably make the film you want.
If there's money to be made in producing "the movie you want," then somebody can be convinced to produce it. If it's not a popular enough concept to make a profit, then I guess you're stuck with your imagination and a book.
Problem with that is that the studios creating the stuff are looking for "good bets" - and a good bet is something that lots of people know and love already. Why make something new, when several generations of men have grown up following the adventures of Batman and Superman?
The remake mentality is primarily tied to minimizing business risks. If somebody was asking me to bet 200 million dollars on a single film, I'd want as many risks minimized as possible, too... this means knowing that the film has a built in appeal, maybe signing up a couple of high-profile stars to help float it... and before you know it, your character-driven piece with snappy dialogue is a $75 million behemoth with 3 blockbuster stars, 20 locations, and a production crew of hundreds.
He's afraid that if he doesn't express outrage over seeing a photo of a penis, everybody will think he's one of them homma-sexshuls.
Yeah, except that the bukkake scene should have provided the emotional center for the whole film!
One trick pony only has one trick. :(
Don't worry, I'm on the case. Keep your hosts files updated, and your Windows recovery disk warm.
Y U MAD BRAH?
Cool story, Bro.
Man, I want you to come talk to my boss and tell him that 42 seconds isn't an "outage of any length."
When you work with market data and trading systems, a "significant outage" is anything with time > 0 that your functionality is unavailable. Business critical applications are, susprisingly, considered critical to the operation of the business.
This is why you have hot-spare High Availability / Disaster Recovery configurations, robust monitoring and load balancing, and a team of operations staff standing by to respond at the first sign of a problem. And that's also why it costs tens of millions of dollars to design, build, test and deploy a system like this, despite the script jockeys' assertions that "LOL 6 guys and 6 months could build that."