interesting story (that goes with pic)
interesting story (that goes with pic)
the lucky stars bit at the end of this scrappleface post is brilliant. fucking atheists will rot in hell :-)
the rest of the post is pretty funny too, though opposed to gay marriage.
rated PG for "mild thematic elements" and brief language. *wonders what themes are objectionable and why they don't say which one(s) it is* as it is, it kinda sounds like they object to movies with themes. heh.
good guys point guns at bad guys. bad guys point guns back and explain "we have a team watching us. if anything goes wrong they will detonate the bombs we placed here which will destroy a whole city block."
ok so the good guys have 2 choices. defiance or appeasement. now i don't want to take anything away from the defiance option, but in the specific case i believe it was credible that if they let bad guys leave, they would not detonate bomb anyway. also it was pretty credible that defiance meant boom.
and of course since Alias is kinda wussy, appeasement it is. so you expect bad guys to back out while still being aimed at. but instead bad guys demand good guys drop guns or boom.
ok now again defiance or appeasement. but now if you say no, bad guys have nothing to gain from boom. they aren't facing death or death. they have the choice between killing themselves or leaving. and all they have to do is endure having guns pointed at them a little longer. so defiance looks like the good bet.
but of course since Alias is a kinda wussy show, they went with appeasement. good guys dropped their guns. this is idiocy. now bad guys can shoot whoever they like before leaving. and in fact in the show after good guys dropped guns, bad guys decided to take one hostage and bring her with them. that wouldn't have happened if good guys kept their guns.
just watched Wild Things. quite good. nice plot twists.
now you may be thinking "isn't that the movie with the kinda infamous sex scene?" yup. but it was good apart from that too. as i said plot twists. also v nice atmosphere.
you might also be thinking "what's so great about a sex scene in a movie when porn is easy to come by?" (ok you probably weren't thinking that)
i suppose the answer parallels the difference between one night stands and sex as part of an intimate, longterm relationship.
sex completely out of context seems boring. motion and nerve impulses. much like walking, swimming, or typing.
or compare these:
- touching molecules
- touching flesh
- touching a girl
- touching the girl you care about
( If you're a female reader and feeling alienated, you're too sensitive ;p )
( If you're a gay guy and feeling especially alienated now, good. I hate you. )
all of them could have been the exact same event! but each has a different meaning.
porn is notorious for its bad plots and lack of character development (when there is any token effort made at all). but this doesn't just make the porn worse by some snobby, artistic standards. it makes the sex scenes worse!
if we identify with, care about, or feel attracted to the characters it makes all the difference. hollywood movies often achieve this. porn doesn't.
also putting sex into everyday life makes the fantasy more accessible (ok not quite everyday life, but closer than cheesy porn flicks)
i'd also like to point out that i explained this *without mysticism*. many people would say one night stands and porn is "soulless sex" or lacking in "spiritual energy" or that somehow the marriage ritual makes all the difference. but when there is an explanation that makes sense and uses meaningful terms instead of fuzzy, mystic ones, we ought to prefer it.
----
on the sex scene being infamous. it overshadowed the plot in a lot of ppl's minds. here's a comment:
now i agree The Usual Suspects was great, and had a strong plot, and was more of a thriller/drama. but Wild Things had a good plot too, dammit.
and down a bit more the commenter asks my question! (but comes up with a different answer)
also got asked to clarify what attracted to, care about, and identify with mean, nonmystically.
identify with = shared values
care about = care about ...? like it matters to you what happens to the person, even though s/he isn't you.
attracted to = person satisfies your criteria for attraction. these are sometimes (always?) kinda irrational and/or arbitrary. and probably very strongly entrenched and not worth fighting with or worrying about either. *shrug*
how is it that TV and movie writers, who i believe are not generally particularly above average people (certainly some are, and some suck too, but on the whole i figure the group is fairly normal morally), anyway, how is it they consistently create characters that are far more likable and more moral than most people, including themselves?
i don't really know if this happens with written stories, cause i rarely read present day stories, and it's pretty hard to judge characters from different eras WRT the morality of ppl in the US today.
i'm not giving examples cause it would be futile. if i gave a dozen examples to try and "prove my point" or something, someone would just give a dozen examples of bad ppl in movies. there are so many movies and tv shows that it'd be pretty trivial to come up with thousands of examples for both sides, so counting examples simply can't be the way to judge the proportion.
I wrote a tetris clone named curi's blocks in python! It took a little over 2 days. It's free unless you really like it. If you really like it you're absolutely required to give me lots of money. My paypal email addy is curi[at]curi[dot]us.
Download it in a here: curi's blocks.zip
It comes with a readme with instructions to run it and key controls and such. But I'll repeat one thing here: you need python and pygame installed to play. Get them here:
I tried to make a standalone windows executable version using py2exe and it actually ran but pausing or losing would crash it. So sorry, source code only. If anyone clueful wants to make an exe or app that'd be cool (hint hint).
Oh also, post your highscores in comments!