NoUseforaUsername

This story has shades of the Dyatlov Pass about it.

Five young men disappear in 70's California in mysterious circumstances, four are later found dead, and one is still missing.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/532063/bizarre-hell-disappearance-yuba-county-five

7 hours ago, BomberPat said:

Racists are imbeciles.

All racists clearly aren't imbeciles, though. Unfortunately, lots of intelligent people hold racist viewpoints. Like people high up in business who prevented minorities getting jobs and attaining career advancement in the past. If Adolf Hitler, and other despots like him, were "imbeciles" they wouldn't have been able to rise to power and influence millions of people with their rhetoric.

The movie's portrayal of race issues IMO was imbecilic and simple-minded, just like the writing and direction.

I watched a movie directly afterwards, Wind River, that put forth a much more interesting, thought provoking and subtle treatment of race issues.

Less Oscar baity, though.

8 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Absolutely no evidence has surfaced suggesting that Harvey Weinstein was responsible for the bum scenes in Wind River. If he was then we probably would have heard about it, no?

Two or three posters responded to your second post about Three Billboards, and you have pointedly ignored their comments. Mind you, I don't want to be seen to be encouraging you to post more, I'd rather if you didn't at all.

Pointedly ignored what comments? The one that mentioned "A Ghost Story", a movie that I've never claimed to have seen? Most of the comments were simply putting forth their own opinions of the movie, they weren't demanding responses from me. Not sure what your beef is there?!

My Weinstein comment wasn't really a serious comment. It was a joke comment based on seeing two gratuitous butt shots in a Weinstein produced movie that I based on the copious news articles over the Harvey Weinstein/My Week with Marilyn controversy. Not my fault it sailed over your head.

Yeah, you don't want me to post at all, which is why you keep mentioning Donald Trump in off topic threads to try and get a rise out of me.

Whatever, mate.

30 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

So you've decided to ignore the Three Billboards debate you set off and now turned your attentions to being wrong about Wind River instead. You do know that Weinstein didn't direct the film, don't you? You are far and away the worst poster on this forum. 

Went to see You Were Never Really Here and it was brilliant. Probably the best Joaquin Phoenix performance I've seen and he's almost always great. It was like a more depressing Leon. Jonny Greenwood's score was possibly the best I've heard since Sicario too.

Yeah, he produced it. Maybe you don't understand the remit of a producer. Maybe you've been under a rock and haven't noticed the several dozen stories about Weinstein using his position as producer to influence the direction of movies/suggest scenes i.e. nude scenes.

Saying "I'm wrong" about 3 Billboards is a bit subjective, no? It's an opinion, mate. Ever hear of one?

And how have I ignored the Three Billboards "debate"? One poster disagreed with what I said and I reiterated my position on it. Another poster differed on some things I said and agreed on others - I don't recall him pulling me up on anything and demanding a response.

Maybe someone challenged me on something and I missed it? Or maybe your just jumping down my throat for no reason.

Watched Wind River. Was curious about why there were two gratuitous butt shots in the movie. Then I saw Harvey Weinstein's name in the credits. Case closed.

15 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

So it's bad for portraying people as racists, and bad for having a narrative arc in which a racist learns the error of their ways?

No, the reason it's bad is because it's poorly written. It simplifies and undermines race issues by portraying racist characters as imbeciles and comic relief. It's also incredibly bad character progression for Rockwell's character to go from being an unhinged lunatic to upstanding, crime solving detective virtually in the blink of an eye. He literally goes from the extreme end of unsympathetic to the extreme end of sympathetic in what, one scene? There's no nuance to it at all. It's just popcorn fare as opposed to the intelligent character piece I was expecting.

If you want to see a movie that portrays racism in a more nuanced light, and has a narrative arc where the racist redeems himself in a logical manner that isn't completely contrived, and happens gradually as opposed to the space of about 5 minutes, watch Dead Man Walking.

I wasted two hours of my life on 3 Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri yesterday.

Shockingly bad movie.

A couple of minutes in I realized what kind of agenda the movie had with the first interaction between Sam Rockwell's character and one of the black gentleman putting up the billboards, the first of several lamely written proxies in the film.

Every character is a caricature; Rockwell's aforementioned character reminding me of Dax Shepard's character in Idiocracy. Every person in the movie is portrayed as a dribbling moron, apart from McDormand and all the black characters.

The script, too, is poorly written. What is this woman's motivation for putting up the billboards I kept waiting patiently to figure out? Yes, her daughter died brutally, but how were Willoughby and the rest of the police department culpable of not doing their jobs properly? We never really figure out. The closest we come is one of several ham-fistedly scripted scenes where McDormand says every man in the country should be put into a database or some shit. Eh, ok? Apparently, the police department is racist, though, but this has no real tangible link to the investigation surrounding her daughter's death. It merely gives Rockwell an excuse to chew scenery, and the Oscars to celebrate how racist America is while lauding another movie that portrays the entire American South as racist and/or stupid.

Another example of the movie's poor scripting, tone deafness and chronically bad dialogue is a cack-handed flashback where McDormand's daughter says she "hopes she gets raped" after storming out of the house the night, she, you know, gets raped and murdered.

The movie struggles, and fails, to find a balance between the seriousness of the subject matter and humour. All through the movie I was wondering is this supposed to be a comedy? An example is the girlfriend of McDormand's ex-husband. I thought it would have had more merit if the ex had shacked up with a 19 year old because he was subconsciously trying to replace his daughter, but, no, the movie basically uses the 19 year old as comic relief in a movie that already has several comic relief characters, including a midget, and doesn't really warrant comic relief.

This brings me to McDormand. Her acting was very good, but a better writer and director would've gotten a better sense of the character. As it is, she resembles a female version of Kevin Bacon in Death Sentence or Bruce Willis in Death Wish playing the female lead in an exploitation movie, rather than shouldering the serious, character-driven piece this should've been. The scene where she kicked a male and female student respectively in the groin area after throwing a can at her car is probably the most egregious example of this movie being a tonal mess and looking for laughs at the wrong time.

Rockwell's character's "redemption" takes the cake in terms of poor writing, though. Someone who turns from dribbling, racist lunatic to conscientious, hard-nosed detective in the space of what must be days in the movie. Don't get me started on the sequence where he attempts to murder someone (which the movie appears to subsequently forget about, as he doesn't appear to be under any sort of IA investigation) and one of the mea culpa proxies, Lester Freamon from The Wire, is introduced in a predictably heavy-handed manner.

I keep mentioning tone deafness, but I haven't even mentioned the best part. The ex-husband having a 19 year old girlfriend is a recurring plot device, yet Woody Harrelson's wife doesn't look a day over 25!

I will end my rant now before I accidentally spoil anything, but, it bears repeating; Rockwell's arc is crucial to the second half of the movie, but, it is written poorly, Freamon's character doesn't really go anywhere and seems to basically be a morally upstanding black character for the sake of the movie's liberal bent in a movie that portrays every white "redneck" character as racist and/or stupid caricatures, and the movie doesn't figure out how properly to transition the co-lead role from Harrelson to Rockwell.

It puts the lotion on the skin or else it gets the hose again.

Them's real purdy legs.

As of a few months ago, most episodes of Thunder were on Youtube.

Didn't Vince have to be talked out of putting a blue dot on Christian's face whenever he wrestled because he thought he was ugly? I don't think Vince ever got behind him.

It should've been Christian one on one with Cena at Vengeance and Summerslam.

There was no need for Jericho to be involved in that feud when he was on the way out anyway.

The beginning of the end for Christian's first run was a month or so after the match the week after this promo when the fans cheered him over Batista.

2005 was quite frustrating in hindsight as guys like Christian, Muhammad Hassan, Carlito and Chris Masters looked like guys who could be legit main event players but by years end they were either gone or treading water.

Sheamus's first title win against Cena was a pretty shit match, not helped by the limitations of working a tables match.

They didn't do a whole lot with the tables, and it took them ages to set up the finishing sequence, which made Cena look stupid and presented Sheamus's win as a fluke.

It didn't a whole lot for either of them and I question what it accomplished.

I saw him on a chatshow with Rick Rude, Jesse Ventura and Sting circa 1994 and he carried himself very well, seems like a nice guy.

6 minutes ago, DEF said:

Any recommendations for Foreign language films from the last 5 - 10 years? I used to be well into them before that but somewhere I just sort of stopped seeking them out. I saw Train to Busan and Shin Godzilla recently and fancy  seeing what else I've missed out on.

Oldboy was excellent IMO, and City of God was good, but you've probably seen them already.

I suppose I meant it in the sense that the first movie had Mark Wahlberg coming into the scene as the father of Will Ferrell's character's children and then the finale introduced John Cena as the father of Mark Wahlberg's stepchild.

Then the second movie introduces Gibson and Lithgow as Wahlberg and Ferrell's parents and the movie coasts on it and doesn't really do anything with it.

I did get it arseways in fairness.

There are a couple of funny scenes, like the staring you in the mirror scene from the trailer (I love those setups reminiscent of Airplane) and the Liam Neeson cameo, but the movie just drifts aimlessly for the most part devoid of any kind of structure.

It had the potential to be better.

10 minutes ago, CleetusVanDamme said:

We didn't get Thunder for ages on TNT, right? First few months might have some decent shit I've never seen before.

Supposedly they went all out for the first month or so and then basically gave up on it.

Probably not.

Shield vs. Evolution at Extreme Rules.

At the start of the match Seth Rollins does one of those dives through the ropes to HHH against the barricade to little or no reaction immediately before Evolution take control, which is an interesting microcosm of what's wrong with that type of high impact wrestling.

Also noteworthy for boobs chanting "Bluetista" and "You Can't Wrestle" towards Batista. Presumably if guys like Vader came along now they would get the same chants.

As for the match, it was paint by numbers stuff I thought.

Any Thunder episodes I've watched have been akin to an extended episode of Velocity.

It's always interesting to see which random gimmicks you never knew existed will turn up though, such as "The Maestro", who isn't a patch on the Seinfeld character.

Daddy's Home 2 was a rudderless sequel, which coasted on the gimmick casting of Mel Gibson and John Lithgow. Disappointing, as the first movie was surprisingly good.

I was going to suggest Reddit. Nevermind.

If anyone wants to go down the rabbit hole for a while, The Murder of Mark Kilroy article on Wikipedia is a disturbing read.

Young American college aged student on a spring break trip across the border kidnapped and then sodomized and tortured as part of a voodoo ritual that his drug running killers believed would protect them from prosecution.

Some of the horror stories I hear about Mexico, you couldn't pay me to go there.

Wasn't Chris Jericho almost kidnapped or something when he was working as Corazon De Leon over there?

I gave it a chance, I bought the DVD, but I just didn't think it's very good.

The acting is poor compared to other HBO shows like The Sopranos, The Wire and Boardwalk Empire.

Bloodsport is an underrated movie.

Someone mentioning Tekken reminded me I must watch it again this weekend.

22 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Anything by The Who would probably be up your street.

I think I get it.

I asked my brother would it be worth my while to go to a concert just to see Cheap Trick supporting Def Leppard when the only song I know is "Photograph" and he turned me on to "When Love and Hate Collide". 

Fuck me, that's a great song. That guitar solo. I have it on constant repeat.

Any other songs I should listen to?