5,962 Forum Posts by "Dr-Worm"
At 5/19/14 01:00 AM, NuScarab wrote: I just read a TV Tropes review of To Kill a Mockingbird which implied that it's not worth telling stories about culture, morality and coming-of-age because "we already know about these things".
Jesus fucking christ. That is seriously one the single most horrifying things I have ever read on the Internet. I have to go find this now, it's too morbidly fascinating.
The Smurf Revolution. Apparently an abortive attempt at starting a Flash crew devoted to making cartoons about the Smurfs. Wow.
At 5/17/14 10:55 PM, exudaz wrote: What would it be like if all the fat acceptance warriors, Social Justice Warriors, feminists, etc from tumblr took over the world?
*Ooone of these things is not like the others*...
Srsly tho, it is super depressing to watch "feminism" curdle into a dirty word around here. I thought we were supposed to be better than fucking Reddit.
Nah, it's a pretty accurate term. Virtually without exception prejudice in this day and age stems from irrational fear of the targeted group. Racists are afraid of the racial and ethnic groups they hate, sexists are afraid of women, homophobes are afraid of gay people.
Nobody's going to legitimize your stupid, hateful opinions by pretending they come from anything more than a pathetic, pants-wetting fear of things changing or people being different from you.
At 5/16/14 12:26 AM, yurgenburgen wrote: no because there's this weird thing in the English language where words can have multiple/different meanings depending on context and/or subject
That too.
At 5/16/14 11:21 AM, mysteriouslila wrote: Photophobia doesn't mean you're scared of light, obviously. It means you physically can't stand it.
And that.
Rick and Morty aired just three episodes last year and they were all in December, I think that's close enough to consider it a 2014 show. So yeah, in that case Rick and Morty is easily the best new show of the year.
I really liked True Detective too, but I actually liked the weirder, more contemplative first half much, much better than the detective fiction boilerplate of the later episodes.
Other than that I've also been watching Silicon Valley and Cartoon Network's Clarence and they're both pretty great.
Butt Ugly Martians.
Also Clarence is adorable and refreshingly realistic and low-key and you guys are out of your goddamn minds.
At 5/15/14 02:49 AM, Vnzi wrote: King Crimson - Thela Hun Ginjeet
Normally I'm not really a prog guy but I kinda dig it! 7/10
At 5/15/14 03:05 AM, 24901miles wrote: This song has a title which can't be posted on the BBS.
I mean, to be fair all the ice cream trucks and whatnot are obviously just trying to do the tune to "Turkey in the Straw" and not this, but still. Yikes. That's American cultural history for ya, horribly racist whenever you dig deep enough.
The Unholy Modal Rounders - Griselda
But American roots music isn't all bad!
Wow, you guys seem awfully concerned with the plight of those poor downtrodden people who only have an overwhelming majority of the power and representation in our society and stuff...
Srsly tho, this thread is a total crock of shit and I guarantee you guys will die alone if you don't get over this ridiculous persecution complex bullshit.
At 5/14/14 11:03 PM, CresIsis wrote: Sufjan Stevens - Romulus
Pretty pretty good! Obviously impossible as it was, it's still just a bit disappointing that Sufjan Stevens never even tried to make good on the promise of his 50 states project. 7/10
At 5/13/14 08:52 PM, Sense-Offender wrote: Dang, I totally thought I would have caught last week's movie. Fell asleep Saturday Night and Sunday was Mother's Day. You still haven't said who's picking, BTW, @Dr-Worm.
Nobody watched the film (including myself) so I figured it'd be best to just give everyone an extra week or two to catch up. I'm assuming people have finals and shit around now so s'all good.
More like Fatman amirite? ...Because he's fat. He looks fat now. Hard fat, maybe, but still fat.
Still, Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms yo.
At 5/13/14 01:48 PM, NuScarab wrote: That's a line I can fall in line with
Me too. I think it's essentially impossible to make art that's completely apolitical. I mean, first of all obviously anything an artist creates is going to be informed by their worldview whether they're aware of it or not, there's no getting around that. But also even if a work has no social consciousness or commentary whatsoever, then doesn't that just make it a tacit endorsement of whatever the dominant social order is?
Look at the recent kerfuffle over Tomodachi Life. Nintendo claimed that they didn't include same-sex relationship options in their game because they didn't want to make any "social commentary," but that very statement is social commentary. In fact, it's a far more aggressive form of social commentary than simply including same-sex couples in their game would have been, seeing as that would have elicited virtually no noteworthy public response whereas their supposedly apolitical inaction has sparked an enormous shitstorm.
In increasingly rough descending order of amount of time spent there:
NY (where I live), MO (where I went to school), NJ, FL, CA, WI, HI, MD, SC, NV, MA, CT, VA, GA, WA, OR, RI, DE, VT, AZ, CO, IL, and OH.
Plus DC and Puerto Rico.
At 5/10/14 05:19 PM, Jester wrote: I don't think there were a lot of people who downright didn't like In Bruges or Moonrise Kingdom, but I don't think people talk about either of them nearly as much. They're both brilliant in their own contexts, and the latter is very close to me because of how much I relate to it.
Moonrise Kingdom was actually a huge commercial success (as well as a critical one). And In Bruges is quickly developing a sizable cult, but yeah, it's a brilliant movie that could always use more attention.
I'm hesitant to call this underrated because Don Hertzfeldt is very influential among specific groups, but I suppose as one of the most important movies I've ever seen, it deserves more attention.
Yeah, I've been really pleasantly surprised by how much ISaBD's cache has grown since its release. I'm confident that someday it's going to reach that all-time classic household name status it totally deserves, but even so, right now I think people outside animation buff circles are still just starting to become aware of it. "Underrated" is a relative term, and ISaBD seriously ought to be considered an essential part of the film canon, which I wouldn't say about some of the more obscure things I listed. So yeah, I'd still consider it underrated.
One of the nice things about being an adult is that you can just like the shit you like and not worry about what arbitrary social label it puts on you.
I don't think there's any good reason to automatically assume that a person isn't being genuine about their cultural interests. You'll find out within five minutes of talking to them anyway.
At 5/10/14 06:27 PM, Xiicubed wrote: 2001: A Space Odyssey
At 5/10/14 06:57 PM, X-Gary-Gigax-X wrote: I avoid foreign movies on principle.
Ugh what the fuck does that even mean.
I had never heard that Tom Waits song before. Wow, amazing like all his stuff. I guess here's mine at the moment:
Mirah - While We Have the Sun
Billy Bragg & Wilco - Another Man's Done Gone
Jackson C. Frank - Blues Run the Game
Yeeeaaah there's no chance in hell I'm going to be able to limit it to three:
Bert Jansch - Needle of Death
Johnny Thunders - You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory
Blind Willie McTell - Statesboro Blues
Elliott Smith - Twilight
Richard & Linda Thompson - The End of the Rainbow
Leonard Cohen - Chelsea Hotel #2
Kathleen Edwards - Away
Richard Thompson - King of Bohemia
Tom Waits - Anywhere I Lay My Head
At 5/10/14 11:30 AM, Slint wrote:
The Cash version is better bruv.
For starters:
Zero for Conduct
It's Such a Beautiful Day
I Was Born, But...
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Where the Wild Things Are
The Rabbi's Cat
Margaret
Cabin Boy
Schizopolis
Putney Swope
The Thin Red Line
A Serious Man
Pootie Tang
Small Change
Lone Star
The Secret of Kells
Chop Shop
Topsy-Turvy
Super Fly
Synecdoche, New York
Yeah...
Motherfucking Coke Music! I wasted an ungodly amount of time on that game. And Neopets. And Runescape. And Gunbound.
At 5/7/14 10:47 PM, Vnzi wrote: hope its okay to talk about concert films
I mean, yeah sure why wouldn't it be. Stop Making Sense would make for a great future MotW pick too.
Watched Stop Making Sense again today, probably the fourth time I've seen it this year, and it still never gets old.
One of these days I want to do the big suit for Halloween or something. Though I doubt I could pull it off like Byrne does.
Wondering what movie I should see next, I want to watch a western this week but sorta sick of the "lone cowboy" trope and want to watch something more intense and personal.
Have you ever seen Johnny Guitar? It's a psychological Western melodrama from the director of Rebel Without a Cause where, unlike pretty much all other Westerns, the protagonist and antagonist are both tough-as-nails women. There are palpable sexual undertones to their rivalry. Somehow this movie was made in the middle of the 1950s.
Also, Unforgiven is basically a great, brutal deconstruction of that whole "lone cowboy" shtick.
And I'd be remiss not to mention Deadwood, which I finished watching recently and has quickly become one of my favorite TV shows ever. Though it kind of drops its Western genre trappings pretty early on and becomes more of just a show that happens to take place in the West, if that makes sense.
I don't think they outright "hate black people" so much as they've internalized racist conceptions of crime and justice to such an extent that they perpetuate them unconsciously. That and there's also lots of institutional pressure to enforce racist policies like stop-and-frisk, etc.
Plus unfortunately the power associated with being a police officer just tends to attract some bullies and thugs and jerks to the job.
At 5/6/14 12:05 AM, 24901miles wrote: Yeah, I suppose it would be pretty bizarre for a girl to wear pants. Not at all comfortable and classy like men in hoop skirts.
Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.
At 5/5/14 10:28 PM, Jackho wrote: I haven't played Gone home and actually thought it was a 2014 title. I've only heard bad things about it too but I'll be sure to give it a go anyway after reading your post, the price tag is just a bit of a turn off.
Yeah I waited until it was on sale before I bought it, you might want to do the same if you're on the fence about it.
At 5/5/14 01:11 PM, SithCorduroy wrote: Masters of the Universe is now forever tainted for me.
Meh, I still love Annie Hall and Chinatown. Sometimes you just have to separate the art from the artist.
At 5/4/14 12:40 AM, Natick wrote: the scene that made me laugh the hardest was when one of the actresses was clearly pretending to smoke a cigarette that wasn't even lit and when the eponymous character stood up to act all dramatic and his afro hit the visible boom microphone
I don't think any scene can top this one.
it does kind of feel as if they play all of their cards too early, especially near the end when the conspiracy turned out to be richard nixon approving the sale of a malt liquor that would shrink black men's penises to trim off the poor population but it never annoyed me
That could arguably just be part of the parody, as a lot of real blaxploitation movies had similarly wonky pacing, disjointed plots and lots of filler.
sorry that i have missed like 5 of these in a row by now but finals are coming to a close so i'll try to get back on track.
Well you can start by picking this week's film!
I figured finals might be the reason behind the lack of participation for the past few weeks. If you can't pick this week's film just try to let me know today so I can figure something else out.
At 5/5/14 12:57 PM, TheMaster wrote: You'd think you'd run out of things you can do with two trains chasing each other after the first 20 minute sequence, but apparently not, because the film has room for two of them and both are funny throughout.
Not to mention legitimately thrilling. I also watched The General for the first time recently (not in the theater with a live score though; I'm mad jelly) and I was amazed by how tightly edited it is.
I think the problem is less about how much research one side or the other has in the debate about video games (and other violent media), more that we're having the wrong conversation in the first place and it leads to nothing productive ever happening.
Yes, obviously we should be suspicious of anyone claiming some sort of one-to-one relationship in which violent video games somehow "trigger" or train people to commit real acts of violence. It's not only an absurd notion that's unsubstantiated by research (a short-term heightened "aggression level" is hardly a direct line to a real violent impulse, let alone a premeditated act of violence committed days or weeks after the fact), but an outright dangerous one in the hands of politicians looking to justify censorship or lobbyists trying to distract from more pressing and legitimate sources of violence (that's a conversation for a different thread but I think you know what I'm talking about here).
But I worry that by getting wrapped up in that whole debate we're ignoring a wider and far important conversation about the role of violence in our culture. It's much easier to point to a single concrete culprit/scapegoat and simply say "let's ban violent games" or "obviously there's nothing wrong with games" than it is to actually do some serious self-examination about a complex issue. But just because we don't want to censor things doesn't mean we shouldn't be critical of them.
We obviously live in a culture that routinely glorifies, abets, sanitizes, and desensitizes us to violence, perhaps especially the kind of culture that's heavily consumed by children.* And that culture, like it informs every other aspect of our lives, obviously informs the way we deal with real violence, quite badly (I mean, just look at the way people talk violently or about violence in pretty much any thread right here on the BBS; that shit doesn't happen in a vacuum).
The solution to this problem isn't to stop creating or distributing violent media, it's just to stop doing it so thoughtlessly. We just have to be more conscientious about what kinds of messages our cultural works might be sending, and whether or not those are the kinds of messages we want them to be sending, and why we keep turning to these violent narratives/language/game mechanics in the first place. That's the conversation we should be having.
*Here's an example of the sort of thing I'm talking about/why I think we're having the wrong conversation: what do you suppose has a worse effect on our cultural understanding of violence, PG-13 violence or R-rated violence? Because I'd say the PG-13 stuff, the type we've decided is perfectly appropriate for children, is significantly worse. Look at the utterly bloodless and consequence-free wanton destruction on display in a film like Man of Steel. What sort of message do you think that sends? In our rush to argue over the amount of violence in our media, we neglect to consider how that violence is actually represented, which is far more important.
