“We have here an unusual opportunity to appraise the human mind, or to examine, in Earth terms, the roles of good and evil in a man: his negative side, which you call hostility, lust, violence, and his positive side, which Earth people express as compassion, love, tenderness.
…and what makes one man an exceptional leader? We see indications that it’s his negative side which makes him strong; that his evil side, controlled and disciplined, is vital to his strength.”
We didn’t spend tens of thousands of years teaching cows to trust, love, and live reciprocally with us. Dogs ACTIVELY think of themselves as friends to humans, as family to the humans they live with. They have and do perform truly heroic acts and show what can only be described as unconditional love.
Does that make it ok to kill cows? No. But don’t ask “What’s the difference?” unless you think ALL life is worth exactly the same amount. In which case, if you had to choose between saving your ONE child or TWO mosquitoes, logically you’d pick the mosquitoes, right?
“General, you are listening to a *machine*! Do the world a favor and don’t act like one.”
“Being split in half is no ‘theory’ to me, doctor. I have a human half, you see, as well as an alien half…submerged, constantly at war with each other.
Personal experience, doctor: I survive it because my intelligence wins out over both; makes them live together.” – Spock
“I am exercising my right to remain silent.” *golden…*
FAIR USE: CRITICISM – Not normally a fan of very-post Python bits by former Pythons, but this is a decent little clip even if it seems a bit punny.
Not Gillcup.
“Dispensing with confrontation because testimony is obviously reliable is akin to dispensing with jury trial because the defendant is obviously guilty.” – US Supreme Court
As harmless and genuinely kind to the kid as Ghost Dog was to Pearline.
FAIR USE: CRITICISM – The calm before the storm. Great movie. I’ve written some horrible reviews, but I think my review of this movie (available on site, yet!) is pretty d@mn accurate.
note how the strengths at the beginning and the weakness/meekness slowly transform and shift until
Jack is basically cowering in obedient fear before the meek butler, who seems now undefeatable,
utterly confident, a “man” whose force of will itself flexes and reverberates with every word and
every movement. in a very short period of time, Grady IS in charge, period…and Jack is his
obedient and thankful servant, trying to his best to please his master, completely disregarding
anything: his wife and child, his sanity, his (tenuous hold on) decency…etc…
the house itself is “alive”. The hotel itself is a living entity, dormant when there are too many
people to “attack” (control), coming alive (slowly) when the number is just a few (caretakers).
The power of the house also is dormant, and needs to “thaw” over the winter…it requires only
someone with “The Shine” to awaken it. These people are the only “danger” the hotel feels…noone
else can (usually) see what IT really is. But those who shine can see, and therefore might be
motivated to try to defeat such things.
The hotel becomes stronger and stronger the longer X (the shiner) remains. It cannot control X,
and cannot kill X…the power of the Shiners is enough to at least combat the hotel to the point
where survival is possible.
Thus the important factor is: There must be another (Y) among them who is weak, mentally and
morally. Someone with no real courage, no real convictions. Someone prone to anger but cowed by
real threats. The house attacks precisely: the first opportunity it can, it appeals to a negative
aspect of Y. Y becomes more comfortable…it appeals again…etc, until Y is NOT Y, Y is the house
manifested in true, purely physical form. There is no longer anyone named “Jack Torrance”, for all
intents and purposes.
Wendy, lacking one of these labels (she has no shine, but she is NOT weak…her love for her son is
so powerful that it, in some ways, shields her from the evil of the house and the house’s hate for
her son.
At the end, the house is TOTALLY alive…everything manifests everywhere to everyone, the entire
place seems to be both screaming at and laughing at the puny mortals attempting to defeat it.
STOP…
And now with a commentary, here is a grumpy old puppy.
I’m old, and I’m not happy.
People today and their fancy “internet” and “word processors”, producing readable, well-researched
book reports.…FLEEBITY FLOOBITY!
In my day, there was only one way to write a book report. You had to use a
typewriter. And if you were lucky you had one at home, but it wasn’t yours.
So you had to fight to the death with the rest of the book-reporting household.
And the longer it was the more hopeless you felt even trying. You had to
type with the same terrified care as playing ‘Doctor’, where a human being is
just a few slots and a lot of buzzers. He had a red nose like Rudolph and
mocked you savagely if you made a mistake.
And we LIKED it! We LOVED it, oh happy day!!!
If you couldn’t use the home typewriter you had to use the one at the library.
And half the keys were stuck. And there was always that mystery key with the
letter faded off. And if you didn’t hit the key hard enough the letter just
looked like a shadow on your piece of typewriter-mandated paper. And if hit
the key too hard it was in BOLD by accident. And if you made a mistake there was
no “back-spacing” over it for easy deletion. And you couldn’t even fix it then
because there was a line a mile long of other kids who waited til the last day,
and if you took too long they turned into ‘Lord Of The Flies’ disciples and put
your head on a pole. So you waited until you finished, half the letters ok,
and the other half too high, too low, misspelled, or just really stupid because
you only took an hour to write the rough draft. And the only way to fix it was
to slather the mistakes in “White-Out”. But you didn’t have the typewriter
anymore so you had to spend 10 hours practicing your calligraphy to make sure you
could write the letter correctly with your black ink pen that stopped working
about halfway through the letter. And you didn’t have another black ink
pen, so you switched to blue ink. And you ended up with some weird symbols from
an alien language in half black and half blue.
And you LIKED it! You loved it, oh happy day!
In my day, we didn’t have all the information you needed just one click away. FLEEBITY FLOOBITY!
In my day, you had to use encyclopedias. And the encyclopedias were outdated
the SECOND you bought them for seven easy payments of fifteen thousand dollars.
And after a year or two one of the volumes went missing. And you could NEVER
find it. So you wrote a five-page book report all the while praying to
Almighty God that not too many words with the letter “t” needed to be used.
And then one of your typewriter keys broke and you had to avoid “m” as well.
So half the time was spent writing and the other half coming up with synonyms
for every “t” or “m” word.
And you never had five pages of real “information”. You had two. So you
had to stretch out that two pages worth by saying the same thing OVER and
OVER again, with only small alterations to sentence structure. And even
after all that it wasn’t ready, because after page 4 and a half you couldn’t
think of any more ways to say the same thing. So you got a black pen and tried
to write as well as you could while walking toward school. And it looked
horrible. And the pen kept failing. And it died completely with three sentences
left to write. So you looked for a blue pen but you couldn’t find one, so you
grabbed that one pencil you had that you hadn’t used since last time you did a
book report and you finished the report in pencil. You completed the hierarchy
of book reports out of necessity. And you knew it wouldn’t even be accepted
if they saw it first, so when people came up to drop off their book reports
on the desk, you went in the middle and tried to quickly have your little
monstrosity covered by someone else’s. And when it came back a “D-” you
didn’t mind…you LOVED it! You danced for joy because at least you didn’t
have to do the whole thing over again.
90 percent of your report was taken from an encyclopedia, and 10 percent from
some book you’d never heard of, but it was vaguely about the subject and you
needed to have another “source”. And the biggest bit of information you got
from that book was the source listing info for your report. That’s right,
every report was the same except a few sentences from the first book you could
find in the library that in any way applied to the subject. But everyone
else was looking for those books too, so you had to pick something with the
most marginal connection to the subject. You made a link between the Cold War
and Ancient Egypt, but since there is no link between the two you just started
writing each letter as widely as possible. And you said the same thing OVER
and OVER again. And by the end you’d gone insane with worry and were trying
to draw some hieroglyphics. And you didn’t even know what they meant.
But that’s ok, because neither did your teacher.
The only “computer” we had was at school. And your eardrums were permanently
damaged by the disaster-avoiding cries of whichever adult saw you ALMOST do
something while the red light was on. And the only thing you could do with it
was play ‘Oregon Trail’. And you thought the horrific graphics were AWESOME.
And you never bought enough of everything to survive. And you failed to make
it to Oregon every single time. One by one, your little party of travellers
died. And the only things you learned from it were 1) never try to go to Oregon
and 2) bullets don’t actually move that fast, so you have to fire three seconds
before the horribly drawn beast hits the center of the screen.
That’s right, you were ignorant, relieved to get a D-, and your reports and
others like them were cited as legitimate explanations for book-burnings.
And that’s the way it was and we LIKED it!
STOP…
CPE 1704 TKS
I want to love and protect those I care about. I want to be good. I want to do something good. I
want to protect things that can’t protect themselves (children, dogs, cats). Dogs and cats have
been domesticated FOR humans, BY humans. They instinctually trust people. We have ENCOURAGED that
trust over the years. Taking that trust, that innocent love, that WE helped them to have, and
using it to hurt them is one of the greatest evils I can think of.
I HATE anyone that causes harm to complete innocents. Not dislike…HATE. Fury, rage,
righteousness. Beyond what you could feel, if the timing is right. Thank God for BPD.
STOP…
FAIR USE: CRITICISM – Really bad video. Pretty good song, especially after watching Black Mirror episode ‘San Junipero’.
STOP…
That guy in ‘American Beauty’ that talked about filming something flying and dancing in the wind. I understand that. I really do, I see how he sees the beauty of it. MOST people can “understand” it. I felt it. I’ve felt a lot of things that people would ignore or mock if I told them, things about beauty and such.
The difference between me and him is: I don’t JUST feel beauty that strongly. I feel lots of emotions very strongly. Some good, some bad, some neutral.
*Me* “That’s a GREAT book…amazing, so powerful near and at the end.”
*Someone else* “How many times have you read it?”
*Me* “Once.”
*Someone else* “Why just once if it’s so ‘great’?”
*Me* “It hurts.”
For instance, the LOVE I would feel (possibly, in his situation, if my mental illness allowed) – which is partly fear, in my case – isn’t the only unusually strong emotion or reaction I would be dealing with.
Basically, the two things I feel the strongest, under the right circumstances, are:
Love (it’s not all or always fear. It’s NOT. But it’s incredibly powerful…and the after-effects sometimes fill me with awe, a sort of distant untouchable sense…and everything else seems to slow down, quiet down…and I revel in the feeling, partly because it’s not emptiness but mostly because it’s so incredible to me). (See ST:TOS “Spock’s Brain and the before/after “amazed, realized, sudden brilliance”/”hesitation, confusion, anxiety, grasping”. So I’ve learned this…and I can just let it wash over me, still somewhat amazed, perhaps in awe. But I’ve also learned that it’s fleeting. It won’t last forever, and when it’s gone it will hurt to know I had it, and lost it, and so I intentionally remind myself it’s fleeting, and prepare for it being gone, so that when it IS, THAT (it being gone) doesn’t hurt as much.
Hate (I’m a decent person. I try to live a good life. I want to be good.) Sometimes, things that happen evoke hate in me. Recognizing this, which is sometimes hard to do, does one of two things. One is that I pause, think, and analyze. I internally test whether it’s justified or just my anger coming to the forefront. And if it’s unjustified, I try to avoid it: do something else for a while, lie down and relax (or try to), etc.
If it’s justified, I can examine a proper response. But generally I think I’m a paper tiger, all bluster and little bite.
Even under the most deserving circumstances, even feeling it DEEPLY, I sometimes can’t do anything about it. I don’t have it in me. Then, at least.
But as a parting comment before I go to watch the movie again, I think, should something happen that is horrible and evil to one that I care about, the horribly-exaggerated comment I made quite a while ago (and more since) is good: “If you X, I will make John Doe’s ‘SLOTH’ look infinitely merciful in comparison.”
“I *SEE*” – pronounced with defiant certainty by a little girl in ITMOM: Pretty d@mn creepy. Personally, I think she was faking it to get out of her work detail.
“Is it better to be loved, or feared?”
“That’s a good question. It’s nice to be both, but if I had my choice…” – Chaz deserves more credit for his performance.
You people out there without mild BPD…you don’t know what you’re missing. – mild rip from ‘The Professional’
If the timing is just right, there is nothing you can feel more than me. Yes, that’s good and bad. But, for me, it’s more good.
The positive aspects of MILD (if I may emphasize) BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder)
The proper mood, enhanced by BPD and CONTROLLED (not “fake”, just tilted in the proper direction, used properly, focused, and ok’d by a quick intellectual analysis), make the following things possible (hypothetically):
– True Love (Or “to blave”, not really sure)
– Righteous Fury (Someone just destroyed everything you love or care about in any way and then walked up to you and said “What are you gonna do about it?” with just a dash of mockery)
– Serenity
– Noone in the world can be more blown away by certain things at certain times: Music, Movies, Nature, Feelings, the Universe…anything, really
Now, if you have AMAZINGLY INTENSE AND PERVASIVE BPD, well, that’s a different thing.
Here’s an example: Seek immediate psychological help if (like this woman on this crime show I watched recently) you’re seriously considering shooting someone in the head, then cuddling up to their corpse for a few hours.
Oh, and I’m still just faking it to get out of my work detail.
You just have to have the knowledge and discipline to know when to use it, and when not to.
And, your anger must be real. When it truly burns, directing it at an opponent can be quite useful.
If you’ll notice, Vader vs. Luke was not easy to predict early on. Neither one was CLEARLY so superior to the other that it was a foregone conclusion.
UNTIL…Vader threatened Luke’s sister.
Wanna know what “Righteous Fury” is?
Watch. (Start at 2:38)
Real men have been using it for CENTURIES. And believe me, it can work for guys like you too.
Anger is a dish best served at room temperature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li0vFxbo3sY
FAIR USE: CRITICISM – Interesting battle scene, interesting conflict. Also, I’m not advocating attacking people with lightsabers. It’s the philosophy that interests me.
“You know, when I left home, my father gave me some very sound advice. Never trust a man who can’t look you in the eye, never talk when you can listen, and never spend venture capital on a limited partnership without a detailed analytical fiduciary prospectus.” – Woody Boyd
My site’s been pretty darn still (there, it moved!) for a while now. And the way I determine that is: I don’t post much at all.
Now, popularity-wise, I’m pretty sure it’s maintained the standards set forth by me when I posted the critical masterpiece ‘Equilibrium’. Of course, it would take a Patrick Batemanian view to properly, monotonely settle that issue with certainty. Yes, it would!
I think a random group of four would probably offer this sort of view:
Results: Inconclusive.
FAIR USE: CRITICISM – For a group sketch in which only one person makes any attempt at speech or movement, not bad at all.
I’d like to be one of the following:
– happy and without any mental illness
– completely insane in such a way that I’m content with how things appear to be, to me
– completely insane in such a way that I get fan mail from fcken weirdos
– a newborn baby
– an old man about to die
– living alone away from everything else with an awesome (though admittedly not BEST, RIP Duchess) dog
– A vampire, werewolf or some fantasy sh1t along those lines
– Member of some group that loves me, that I love, and that does good
– a magician
– painlessly dead and in the Great Unknown
Any of those would be great.
Interested? Just make a comment on this. Thanx bunches.
FAIR USE: CRITICISM – The above two clips are just as the post title says. Much better than standard BS PR, I think at least. She seems candid, she seems to herself feel some part of the character she’s playing, and they’re fairly interesting.
There’s one feeling/emotion that’s very difficult to experience, both in terms of actually finding oneself in an appropriate situation and in terms of the resulting brief lack of functionality.
It’s beyond despair and above hatred…it’s more akin to incredulous disbelief: How could you possibly do something so vile? How could you, WHY would you rip out my heart like that?
FAIR USE: CRITICISM – Good scene from a great movie. Robert the Bruce never actually DID that, but it’s a good scene nonetheless.
FAIR USE: CRITICISM – Great scene from a not-quite-as-great movie.
Borrowed Guest Quote: “…you think no one will ever work a change on again until the next time it happens, whereupon you wonder why there isn’t loads more. It seems so simple.” – R. Christgau
FAIR USE: CRITICISM – Don’t care much for the movie, but this scene is pretty darn cool. Perfect “backstory” for the character that would eventually emerge. You see, establishing a BACKGROUND (realistic, that is) is a good thing. It’s not as necessary as establishing a character who goes through at least MILD changes in likes/dislikes/personality quirks in 50 years, but it’s up there.
A tiny bit more risky/impulsive than Anakin in Episode One. And he turned out quite different, in a good way.
It takes effort.
“Alright…we’ll take the girl if you take Frasier.”
Lots of creepy images and scenes. Somewhat predictable. Actually VERY predictable, if you just go by the scary music warnings.
Not much character development.
BUT…the actors are decent enough. The idea isn’t exactly fresh and innovative…they seem to borrow a little here, a little there; stuff they liked, stuff they wanted to imitate, stuff they wanted to make their own…that’s my guess, at least.
So…predictably creepy, and interesting enough to give it a shot if you like that sort of thing.
ITMOM (Nice picture), ‘Night’ re-make uncle, ‘The Dead Zone’…you’ve seen some things before, but they’re not the WHOLE movie, so they’re kinda cool actually.
Zombieish, found footagey.
Inspirational Quote: “You should really let me go.”
I actually was gonna make a point with visual aids about how Johnny Ringo acts cowardly in ‘Tombstone’. But silly me, I overlooked a MUCH more obvious choice: Ike Clanton.
Ike Clanton takes every chance he can get to PUSH the other side (the Earps, Holiday), but in the end, in the MOMENT (see…some moments have more importance than others…that’s why you have to live in them: you never know when a nothing moment will turn into a much more important moment), he runs away, leaving his younger brother Billy (who by all acounts fought valiantly) to die.
If you push, if you keep pushing, you better be ready for a push back. And that’s the moment of truth: Are you a coward, or aren’t you?
Of course, most people/times/occasions/etc that bluster collapse when their bluff is called. BUT…there is always the smallest chance that you’ll find someone who is NOT bluffing. And THAT (the odds) is the ONLY thing that keeps wannabes in business.
I guess the world needs ’em, huh?
Great odds they won’t call…but IF…IF they do, you better be better than Ringo vs. Holiday.
I still think that, as adapted movie warnings go, this is pretty d@mn good:
“If you ever X, I’ll make John Doe’s “SLOTH” look supremely merciful in comparison.”
Course, that’s just BS from me. But it makes a somewhat interesting reference.
FAIR USE: CRITICISM – Great clip from an underrated movie.
Manage to acquire some sort of business, make it really really suck, then have two friends come in during peak hours. Wait for any sort of complaint from any customer, and then…
(Friend One) :Speaking up as they stand, as if to corroborate the complaint, and saying the long insult by the Waldorf Salad guy altered as necessary, but clearly on the complainer’s side:
THEN, very quickly, friend two stands as if deeply offended, speaking up as the Major did in the Waldorf Salad episode of ‘Fawlty Towers’, and making his punchline be another crummy business that does what yours does but is even WORSE.
James Tiberius Kirk handled it very well, of course…but I think there’s another scenario response that ought to be tried. You’ll still LOSE, of course…but you lose in STYLE, baby.
*Kobayashi Maru Commander* “This is the Kobayashi Maru…we have struck a-”
*Cadet, Interrupting* “Yeah, I know. Look, here’s an idea ladies and germs – next time your navigations officer or whatever-spacial-dangers officer says ‘Captain…we appear to be headed toward some sort of mine’, DON’T say “Ehhh…keep going”.
OR…
*Kobayashi Maru Commander* “Steady on course, helmsman.”
*Helmsman* “Ummm…begging the Captain’s pardon, but this is the area that has contained a mine each of the past 237 times we’ve entered it. Maybe we should just hook a right, or something?”
The great thing about Norm’s act/performing style is that it will go completely unnoticed when he finally goes senile and starts just rambling incoherently, without timing or interest in whether people can understand or not.
I’m sick of calling his attitude “brave”. It’s just fcken smug-a$$ dull by this point. If a bit of good humor comes out now and again, credit the law of averages.
Grade For My Grade-Giving/Reviews: Sometimes they suck, but usually there’s SOME bit of interest in them, at least. And occasionally I pull some great inspiration from out of nowhere. That’s for you Mortone!
Louis C.K. – If you find a clip you haven’t seen, give it a watch. Never bad. His specials are probably his best (I haven’t seen EVERY C.K. bit) but there’s small bits of inspired tastelessness out there all over the place. That’s a Bingo!
You know the story, of course. So the question is “how well will they tell it?”
This particular version has impressive performances by the female lead and Ben Kingsley.
The other characters seem peripheral – not bad, but not really good…”capable”.
It’s a little bit too teen-angst/cliche for me at parts in the beginning, but overall this is a pretty good movie. Nowhere near the power of ‘Schindler’s List’, but something I think should at least be given a chance.
Builds somewhat slowly after the capture – shows the gradual loss of anything that even resembles humane treatment.
What I remembered: Well-made enough, a bit macho, fairly interesting, not interesting enough to compel viewing but enough to warrant a look-see, too much flashbacking.
Confirmed.
Has a bit of a Dreckheimer feel about it…but Denzel and (usually) the plot are enough to get by that.
