Chris B

Ooh, the idea of replicating stuff like this isn't something I'd thought of - that sounds like a lot of fun.

I did it... for The Rock.

No wonder it didn't last.

12 hours ago, BomberPat said:

They talk about Bernard Manning a lot more than you might expect.

 

Oh no - is Regal a fan?

12 hours ago, Weezenal said:

Filmic Pro have switched to a subscription model, even for people that paid up front. They can fuck off.

I haven't used it for a while, so didn't know this. Ugh. I've just looked it up though, and if you bought it in the past, you should still have access to Filmic legacy - the previous version of the app. I haven't tested it yet, and heard sorting it out is a little fiddly, but once you do, it should just be the regular recent version of the app.

1 hour ago, westlondonmist said:

I enjoyed that ☹️

It was enjoyable, but it's so clearly the kind of thing BAFTA judges love - a theatrical farce with a big cast, all about the West End and tweaking Attenborough's nipples. All incredibly masturbatory. 

Talking of his music, his Lost Themes albums are so much fun. They're regular listens for me while working.

I think he's still bitter about how his filmmaking career finished, but he seems genuinely enthusiastic about being involved on the music side still.

A little more context:

6 minutes ago, FelatioLips said:

I certainly notice how often I say "my wife" on here

1 hour ago, Silky Kisser said:

Blasted through the UK version of The Traitors last weekend after the positive chatter on here.

Same - haven't binge-watched anything like that in ages, and holy shit. What a tremendous show, to the point where I'm not convinced any other season will match up to it.

Thom making himself the main character in Ep 4 was one of the most amazing hours of TV I've ever seen. And it was absolutely clear that what actually happened was that he screwed up with a big emotional moment at the start of the day, then spent the rest of the episode desperately trying to prove that no, he was actually a genius and was completely in control and knew more than anyone else, actually. And the fact that the episode was all completely predictable from then on made it just that much better.

5 minutes ago, SaitoRyo said:

I'd say Halloween is a close second, but there are three or four in the conversation. Just a tremendously versatile director whose work has stood the test of time.

If it was almost any other director, the conversation would start and end with Halloween. It's almost certainly the most influential and important film he's made. And it's absolutely brilliant.

I slightly love The Fog and The Thing more, and there's a slight underdog thing going on with both - The Thing because of how it fared at the time, and The Fog because it's pretty much nobody's favourite Carpenter movie, but is absolutely dripping with atmosphere. It's also my favourite score he's done, I think. At least, it's the one I'm most likely to listen to.

For me, the answer is 'Whichever one I saw most recently'. Totally agree with @Devon Malcolm- Carpenter is also my favourite film director, and I think it's a real shame that producers stopped trusting him on the back of the 90s, as it likely robbed us of some fascinating stuff in the 2000s. 

The 90s run of big conceptual stuff was really interesting - I need to revisit In The Mouth of Madness and The Prince of Darkness, as neither of them blew me away, but both had really fun stuff in there. I found they both struggled a little in terms of budget vs ideas... but I think that was likely comparing them to other things rather than seeing them on their own terms.

I think The Thing is one of those rare movies that pretty much perfectly does what it sets out to do (along with Casablanca, Jaws and Die Hard). It's a little perfect piece of clockwork precision, where there's not a moment that's not driving the entire thing forward, and it does it surprisingly subtly throughout.

I also love that Carpenter brought in Ennio Morricone to do the score, as the producers didn't want what they saw as a lower-budget Carpenter score, and Morricone wrote the most perfect Carpenter score you've ever heard. He produced the synth version as a 'here's what it will overall sound like' before producing the entire sountrack with an orchestra - which Carpenter promptly ignored, massively preferring the synth version... and Morricone didn't know until he saw the film at the premiere. (Some unused tunes were later used for The Hateful Eight).

4 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

Eddie Kingston, perhaps less than any wrestler today, is probably the easiest wrestler to book for around. He doesn't need convoluted stories with twists and turns, you just pick a top wrestler as an opponent and throw him out there. Job done. Eddie's character is so dynamic and exciting that he basically fills in all the gaps for you and he'll get you invested in about 20 seconds. 

You definitely don't need a bunch of SPOOKY MIND GAMES.

When Kevin Owens started in NXT, one of the things that set him apart is a similar quality to Eddie Kingston - he was just a one-man feud factory, able to walk in and establish an argument with anyone in seconds. He managed to make Alex Riley relevant for a few minutes at one point, based on arguing with him on commentary.

Kingston is the same, but instead of bullying and aggressiveness, it's through sheer over-sensitivity and a sense of justice. He's capable of perceiving a slight from anyone, and treating it as a grievance that needs to be addressed. And because he's consistent with it and will throw himself in front of a bullet to protect a friend due to the same qualities, it keeps him on the side of the angels as well, even when feuding with other faces.

Spooky mind games definitely not needed - and it works even worse for Kingston to sell it. 

1 hour ago, Infinity Land said:

As well as a delightful glass of Orange Juice. Sorry, that's Orange Cassidy v. Juice Robinson for the All-Atlantic titles which isn't so delightful.

It's Juice vs Darby for the TNT title, isn't it?

Hopefully, he did it while yelling "YOU SHALL NOT PARK!"

That was a hell of a show. I expected to hate the MJF bit more than I did, and I didn't get on with the Ricky Starks bit, but otherwise - holy shit. Banging opener with Hangman and Mox, the crowd energy during Takeshita/Danielson was fantastic and so much fun, and the Trios match was just hugely entertaining nonsense.

The note with Hangman looking upset that he'd possibly actually hurt Mox was great, and the kind of thing AEW does so well. One of the first points I remember thinking they had something special with this show was a similar small moment - after the Lights Out match with Moxley, Omega isn't cleared the following week to wrestle, and he consoles himself by acknowledging it was a pretty rough match, so it's not a surprise neither him nor Mox have been cleared. And the Doctor says 'Nah, Moxley is cleared', and Omega just goes quiet and leaves. Love this kind of stuff.

While Supremo and Bomberpat have both been superb, @air_raid's house show thread could be easily turned into a book (and I mean that as a compliment). Absolutely astonishing stuff.

3 hours ago, Jonny Vegas said:

One of my best mates growing up became very invested in a theory that the freemasons was basically a front for satanism and had sent me quite a lot of stuff whereby rituals, ceremonies, initiations and wordings of things known about both were near identical.

There was a lot that certainly seemed to be quite detailed in their similarties for it to be purely coincidental.

A lot of the idea was that those at the very top were the ones with knowledge of what it was really about and a global network of secret socieities allowed them to go about their business under the radar. 

Those at the lower levels majoritively had no idea about what was going on at the top and that also helped with hiding in plain sight.

There were a lot of links and endorsements of freemasonry from people such as Anton LaVey and Aleister Crowley too.

 

I think, for the most part, the freemasons are exactly what they say they are - a bunch of middle-aged professionals cosplaying Satanism, because nobody had invented larping yet. And, at its core, I think that's still what it is.

However, unintentionally, it's also a corruption machine. Because people in it tend to be grouped in similar industries, you end up with very private networking going on. And they're all decent chaps who know each other are decent chaps, so there's an enormous amount of (at least) unconscious bias going on, where they're more likely to listen to, promote, or hire each other. And that's on the nicest side of it - even if you're roleplaying a secret society having secret meetings about how they run things, you end up actually having a secret society having secret meetings about how they run things.

45 minutes ago, The King Of Swing said:

I'd be well up for Jarrett Vs. Sting just for the novelty of that match happening in 2023.

They'd probably have a banger, as well. 

I'd like to have Billy Gunn and Dustin Rhodes in the mix too.

6 hours ago, Jesse said:

No-one shot JFK, his head just did that

Slightly more believable, but there was a documentary a little while talking about the 'JFK was accidentally shot' theory, and that sounded entirely believable to me. It doesn't change much from the official story,  but it does remove the sinister aspect of why a cover-up might happen - the basic idea is that when Oswald started shooting, one of Kennedy's bodyguards accidentally shot him while panicking and taking his gun out/turning around. 

Basically, it wasn't a conspiracy to kill Kennedy - it was a fuck up, and everyone who knew the truth was protecting one of their own, because why the hell should that guy take the blame when you had a guy genuinely trying to kill him at the same time. Of all the conspiracy theories I've heard, it's the one that makes the most emotional sense to me, because it gives a legit reason to everyone involved lying and covering up.

13 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

We hear all the time about "Russian bots" but I'd expect disinformation bots to come from pretty much everywhere now, every major power.

Who's a bot here?

To be fair, I think it's far more a case of astroturfing than bots - no need to automate something when you can just pay people peanuts to have multiple accounts and argue boringly with people. making the same circular points and over-expanded pedantic points that are actually irrelevant until the other person loses interest in... okay, now I actually think a couple of people on here may be part of it.

23 hours ago, BomberPat said:

It's something I think about a lot. AbBelieving in that sort of thing is not a world-view that's going to begin or end with the Moon landing - it shouldn't naturally follow that someone who has "reasonable doubts" about whether NASA went to the Moon also believes in Bigfoot, and that people get abducted by aliens, and that there's something weird about the Pyramids, yet you often see a pattern of that kind of out-there belief, because it's never just one thing. It's not a measured questioning of the "official story", it's a complete world-view.

I think there's a quasi-religious aspect to it. It's not about individual conspiracies, but it's about a more general 'real way the world works'. I started realising this when I saw some market stalls selling conspiracy stuff alongside meditation and religious stuff. 

I reckon a lot of it is about people trying to understand and make sense of inequality and why their lives are shit - it's easier if you can blame God or a vast conspiracy that means people like them have it easier while people like you struggle unfairly. And if you wander away from classic religion, then you have this religion-level belief in conspiracy theories that plugs a whole load of the same 'easy answers'.

17 hours ago, Fatty Facesitter said:

...it won't stop me pretending to be the driver at the front of the DLR either. Although you do get some funny looks when you make fake horn sounds. 

Of course, the most satisfying thing is when there's a kid that wants the seat, but you get there first and they have to just sit there and watch you pretending to drive.

2 hours ago, BomberPat said:

The thing with the accuracy of cut stones is an easy one to explain - it's just not true. There are barely two stones on the Great Pyramid of Giza that are the same size, plenty of them don't fit together particularly well at all, and just generally there's a lot of variation and none of the "pinpoint precision" you hear about. All perfectly possible with tools available at the time. Which, actually, is kind of a defining feature of this kind of pseudo-history - the conspiracist argument, if we accepted that the stones were constructed with that level of precision, is "the people of that time didn't have these tools, so someone else must have done it", whereas a rational historical argument would be that it calls into question what tools were available to these people, not whether the people themselves were incapable.

I can't remember exactly which theory it was, but it was adjacent to the type of thing you're talking about here - my partner talked about how one of these 'must have been aliens' theorists made the point that the precision of the angles of the pyramids (or something similar) was really important, and had a whole thing on TV about it. And it was how they were exactly 51.5° or something - and it turned out that they just hadn't been measured, and when they were measured, it was more a range of 49°-52°. And he then pivoted to saying the exact degrees weren't the point, despite them being the entire point.

Excalibur is clearly a fan of British comedy stuff - and has good taste. He's also referenced Pratchett a few times, including explaining to Taz once that something was 'a pune, or a play on words'.

3 hours ago, CavemanLynn said:

I'm not so surprised. All three have years on the clock which translates to that innate confidence you just don't get with guys who've been stiffing each other on indies for years. It means they know how to turn it on when it's time to fire up, but more importantly they have a real grasp of how OTT to go to get fun stuff over, without youthful self-consciousness.. Take that gif of Dub J hamming it up beautifully, skipping across the ring, while the lesser Jay just sits in the middle of the ring with his hands raised. The fistbump even adds a perfect little punchline to the whole thing, making it a mini spot rather than just a thing that happens and blurs into everything else. The more I watch, the more I appreciate the great timing and ring positioning of these guys and Dustin, that gets them more out of less. I hope the young'uns are taking notes.

On top of all of this, his arms-shaking over-the-top celebration when he was handed the title, before (as @Supremo pointed out) trying to stand between Aubrey and the other ref to prevent her explaining what had happened, to his howls of fury on his knees when they lost - everything about it was great. And it made Lethal look even worse that everything he did was so muted in comparison. 

Jeff Jarrett has been fantastic at the silly stuff in AEW. Everything he did in the tag match against The Acclaimed was great - I particularly loved his joyful little scamper across the ring and celebratory fist pump after Billy Gunn was ejected from ringside. And the whole bit before where they did a rap against the Acclaimed, then took enormous offence at the response - phenomenal stuff. It's a shame Lethal is also there, but Jarrett is hilarious.