Right now the world is run by faceless people in the background who engineer situations much like the illuminati and though we think it's our pollies it's really not. And tiat is scarier, because the showdy people are not accountable to anyone.
Right now the world is run by faceless people in the background who engineer situations much like the illuminati and though we think it's our pollies it's really not. And tiat is scarier, because the showdy people are not accountable to anyone.
ghods, you don't need to run as far as Weishaupt's "secret" mob when we've already got the Fabians, Freemasons, Rhodes' educated, Marxists, Extreme Greens, Bilderbergs & other Bankers, etc, etc, etc already blatantly working out in the open.
Then look up which folk in current and recently past politics are "Rhodes Scholars".
As ever, the aim is still to bring about a form of totalitarian socialism with a privileged few safely ruling the gullible masses thanks to the shield provided by a locked down police state - where most of those who become the police are the last kinds of people who should ever have that kind of responsibility.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face -- forever." - George Orwell
... and the fcukwits who voted for either KRudd or the Evil Greens last election, and continue to side with AGW Alarmism, have helped bring that jackboot closer to our faces, sooner !
Far too many will realise far too late that what they've helped enable was never going to prove to be a friend to the way of life they thought they were working towards.
That will come. Only it will be heat ray guns and killer robots.
The Queen
This was more like a dramatised reenactment than a movie. I found it a fascinating speculation into the behind the scenes affairs of Her Majesty. I admit to being a monarchist, and feel gratitude I was backpacking during Diana's death, missing the media frenzy.
I just don't understand the attachment people develop for celebs. I certainly love the Queen, but I won't be buying any flowers upon her death to lay in a public masturbation display. I'll be stoic and reserved with my grief, as she would approve.
Absolutely. I'm just being my usual pragmatic offensive self to potentially imprint useful soul saving impression upon various minds.
ie, the arrival of a certain day and conditions might remind the odd soul to remember "hey, this is exactly what that tool derspatz was raving about - ghods, perhaps he was right after all - I better rethink a few things and change my ways and get my self right with our Creator ..." etc, etc.
But if I can turn off a few people from supporting the evil greens along the way, then bonus !
I saw Basterds last night and it's fantastic, loved every minute, wonderful performances, more restrained on the gore front than Tarantino is usually. Altogether a slick production. I love looney Pitt, he's having so much fun in this movie. The German "Hunter" is just superb, wonder if this will get any Oscars, plenty of deserving performances.
Right now the world is run by faceless people in the background who engineer situations much like the illuminati and though we think it's our pollies it's really not. And tiat is scarier, because the showdy people are not accountable to anyone.
This reminds me of something my boss once said to me.
"Justin, there are plenty of places you work, where people will want to stick the knife in your back, when you're not looking. You won't get that with me. You'll always see me coming with the knife."
This reminds me of something my boss once said to me.
"Justin, there are plenty of places you work, where people will want to stick the knife in your back, when you're not looking. You won't get that with me. You'll always see me coming with the knife."
"The Queen" was one of my favourite movies from 2007. I kept wondering when Martin Sheen was going to pop up, but then realised I'd misread the credits and it was Michael Sheen - he played Tony Blair.
And Tony Blair doesn't have a dishwasher, stands in the kitchen washing the dishes wearing a Newcastle United shirt?
The movie dwelt a bit on the fairly strong relationship between the Queen and Tony Blair, and that part worked well.
It was quite a moving film and I thought nicely sympathetic to the Queen. It was quite poignant when she saw some of the messages people had left about her at the Palace gates after Diana died, and Helen Mirren captured (how the Queen would have felt) quite nicely. The piece about the stag was also good.
An under-rated movie. Fat chance of it doing well at the Oscars that year, for obvious reasons.
Yeah I found The Queen to be pretty interesting too. You feel sorry to this family that has to deal with the death of a woman they feel has treated their son terribly.
Right now I'm watching "The Hurt Locker", which is about a bomb disposal team in Baghdad.
Very tense movie. A world where you don't know if the locals are passively hostile of the Americans or actively out to kill them. It's all done in a semi-documentary style. There's not "story" other than following these guys as things get worse and worse.
I saw Basterds last night and it's fantastic, loved every minute, wonderful performances, more restrained on the gore front than Tarantino is usually. Altogether a slick production. I love looney Pitt, he's having so much fun in this movie. The German "Hunter" is just superb, wonder if this will get any Oscars, plenty of deserving performances.
i'll just copy and past my avatar thoughts from elsewhere.
You know this film, it looks sweet… but the trailer doesn’t blow me away. Or at least now as much as I wanted. It’s still all very cool though. Like yeah there’s cool stuff there, but it doesn’t sell me or get me excited any more than some cool pictures from the film of some design stuff, or mech suites or whatever would.
I watched the trailer, was a bit.. cool but eh.. then that same day I went to see the 15 minutes screening at the Imax in Melbourne in 3D. Firstly, I actually don’t know if i’d go see the film for the first time in 3d or not. A lot of the clips were fast moving and at least on the imax screen it just wasn’t smooth. A lot of ghosting and flickering when it was moving fast. Also it is very pretty but in 3d colours are muted and u get less detail. Could be a factor of the big imax screen and their projector. So I actually wasn’t quite sold on the 3d. It didn’t seem necessary to the scenes. It was all shot how a normal film would be, so if I actually will see it in 3d or not depending on the cinema. At this screening it seemed more of an annoyance. Although I am sure i’ll probably see it in both. Unless the film blows.
The animation was very smooth and nice. However the Navi still suffer from that design for animated characters of cartoonish out of proportion features. It’s much easier to animated in such a manner, just look at the Incredibles versus beowolf. You don’t need the subtitles for a cartoonish look as these are too hard to do. So that’s a criticism in the design. Maybe the tech and the skills just aren’t up to that point even still. Although Davey Jones which still is the best realised 3d character didn’t have those problems. The animation though it was all very fluid and all of it was really well integrated into the environments.
The environments.. it all sort of had that artificial look that King Kong had. Better, more detail, but you know how it looked cool but still looked artificial. That said, this is all more commentary on the photo-real claims. It’s very detailed, very nicely done, still isn’t photo real, but i can’t think of anything really better. Still for my money on the photo real, Davey Jones looked more real than the Navi.
The scenes we saw looked good, but didn’t tell you much about the story but you get the jist. While i wanted to keep watching after the 15 minutes were up and I was enjoying it, I actually now have some doubts about the film. My worry is, and it’s what was in a bulk of the scenes that it’ll be too much on the love story, and Sam Worthington character noticing and respecting the beauty of Pandora. His character, Jake Sully also seemed a bit over enthusiastic and yeah, big bright eyed “wow everything is awesome.” Although it’s part of his enthusiasm of going from a paraplegic to having a big blue alien body with naturally occurring carbon fibre bones to run around in.. still seemed a bit annoying.
It was all very cool, but it didn’t have that cool kick ass Aliens like vibe i was hoping for. I guess you know that gritty sort of feel something like Aliens or the Abyss had. That said the clips didn’t have any of the military stuff except the cool looking general guy giving a briefing about the dangers of Pandora. I just hope the sense of the film marvelling at how pretty it all is, which is a hint I got from the clips isn’t too noticeable in the final film. It is all very cool though. Animation was up there with the best i’ve seen, visually very pretty. I do have some doubts though. The action scenes was being chased by a monster thing, all cool, but nothing I haven’t seen before. And then breaking a flying creatures to a pet, which all seemed to re-enforce some of my worries. So basically Jake has to wrestle a fluro pterodactyl thing, then it breaks and he can fly it.. the whole.. of respect nature, there is beauty around you but you may not see it sort of crap. Which is kind of silly when they whole world is so pretty and the plants glow at night that it’s hard to miss. It doesn’t have the look of a big frightening scary place. Looks more like something out of charlie and the chocolate factory. All this said, has Cameron made a bad film. No… yes lets ignore the flying piranha one.. So I have faith.. i just hope for more aliens and the abyss, than titanic, which I don’t know if I saw. Actually I didn’t see that.. so yeah.
Time will tell but I am impressed by it, but not sold and now have doubts it’ll be the awesome I hoped for.
The film was a mixture of good and dull. There was lots of stuff that simply didn't work, or it just screamed out it was meant to be clever, but it wasn't.
There were some good bits, the whole scene in the tavern was the best all round bit. Can't really fault that. The first couple chapters were mostly dull. The final act, was great.. then just dragged. Really did need editing and better pacing. The film and most scenes started off well, but then fluctuated from being interesting... to loosing interest, then peaking again, then loosing. I found it quite poor form.
Now I am being overly hard on this film, it's not terrible, but for all the praise that it simply does not deserve due to glaring faults all through out.
Everything was all so one dimensional and simplistic as well. No matter how many times QT and his fan boys repeat his stuff is intelligent, they won't be right. The day before I saw it, i was listening to QT on Stern talking about how intelligent and layered the film is, but it wasn't. When I say it was all one dimensional I mean, how every character was an idea of a character which really went no where, and for most characters they were just there to show what QT thought was a cool idea for a character, but the characters then went no where. Only really with the exception of Col. Hans Landa.
There were some glimmers here and there of great stuff popping up frequently, but the film was over all quite unimaginative and just didn't know when it was being interesting and entertaining or when it was dragging or boring.
The film was essentially QT just coming up with a concept for a film, and instead of writing much of a story he just wrote some extended scenes, and called them chapters and forgot about how to structure or write a story or character arcs or any of the hallmarks of a good film. I am not going to excuse this as some "genius" because as I stated most characters went no where. "Hey this would be a cool idea for a character, lets introduce him.. then do nothing with it" is not good film making.
I really felt the film was a perfect example of a film maker not being able to step back and make necessary changes. This really showed in the lack of editing and pacing of the scenes. The opening scene starts off good, and there's good stuff in it.. but yeah it goes on too long, working out the idea much longer than it needed.
Brad Pitt delivered almost every line as if he was saying some clever dialogue waiting for the audience to laugh. It was quite embarrassingly bad. Except when he spoke Italian which was one of the highlights of the movie.
The film wasn't terrible, it wasn't unwatchable, there are plenty of bits to enjoy, but with the over indulgences and the simplistic one dimensional aspect of most of the characters, the film simply just doesn't live up to the promise of the reviews, the hype or what itself promises to deliver with in it through set ups that don't go anywhere. It was also severely underwritten. QT did just write a bunch of scenes for a movie, but not the movie.
It was also interesting some of the underlying messages of the film, it was pretty racist and a pretty simplistic look at the nature of war and the soldiers.
Some maybe spoilerish comments
The changed history was actually pretty dumb and pointless. Just went into the Jewish revenge fantasy.
Wow a slightly different ending to the end of the war where some jewish characters get to be responsible for it and get some revenge.
If you want to be ballsy and change the course of the war, don't just have hitler die a bit earlier, have him win or something that leads to a different outcome. I don't really have a problem to changing this for fiction, but i'd rather they do something more clever then have two jewish soldiers shooting nazi's in a burning theatre.
Also Hans Lander was the real hero of the film. The only reason hitler died, but the whole underlying message of, you must never forgive, you must always punish the opposite site, the loosing side of war, and their soldiers is something I am just morally and intellectually repulsed by.
The whole idea that every German soldier was responsible and must live as being a Nazi, come on. While the Nazi's did ****ed up things, 99% of the troops were victims such as the Allied soldiers.
If this is acceptable to blame the men on the ground with no say, as opposed to the leadership, well then **** australian troops. Where do you end it, out troops, US troops, British troops, troops every where do ****ed up things as a result of bad leadership.
It is just morally wrong and intellectually simplistic, uncivilised and childish to have such attitudes of labelling the troops all responsible for the greater crimes of a side in a conlict. And yes this applies to ww2 when the Nazi's did particularly bad things.
You could easily argue Aldo and his men were worse than Hans Lander. Hans was doing his job, he was self-opportunistic, but when the time came he did the right thing. He says it's just his job, not that he takes any great pleasure in it, he just happens to be good at it. How many soldiers in any war that do horrible things can say the same thing? Most if not all. Aldo and his men were out for revenge and bloodlust taking pleasure in it. That is a greater sign of more evil if you were to go into it.
Really just speaks more of the simplistic look at the nature of war and soldiers and how we're meant to just buy into one side as not being human or victims or anything other than "evil."
It goes back to how the film really is pretty insulting to Jewish and German people. The whole every german must always live with the nazi shame and be reminded every day message, and the way QT trivialises what happened to the jewish people in the war and then makes claims, if only these characters existed this is what could have happened. It really is saying, "if only the jews fought back it wouldn't have happened." It goes back to that embarrassment in the couple of decades after the war with the shame of Jewish people from the idea they just walked into gas chambers and didn't fight back. That whole image of them.
This is a lot of just nit picking stuff that is interesting in the film, but I really thing the fact I am sure most of it was missed and ignored by QT ones again adds to the huge problem with how simplistic the film was.
Up_all_night, I can't fault such a thought out response to the film. If you didn't thoroughly enjoy Basterds as I did, I can't convince you otherwise. Yet the languid unfolding of the plot, the rise and fall of tensions, the savouring of scenes (which you felt dragged on); these are all elements I loved. Maybe your tastes lie slightly outside the spectrum of Tarantino, so that you can enjoy some elements, but not others.
I do agree there is something a bit messy about the film. Had it completely dropped the comic book like action of the Basterds, and the alternate history angle with its silly caricature of Hitler (which may have provoked unintentional laughter with younger audiences, as I witnessed with Nixon's appearance in Watchmen), and focussed instead upon the intrigue of the French resistance, it would have been a more pure work.
The alternative: a remaking of The Dirty Dozen, would have just been naif. But I was utterly immersed in the film and don't have the heart to nitpick it like yourself.
However, I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment regarding the merciless and unfair agenda of the film. In the context of the film by itself, the massacre at the start just wasn't enough to justify the violence wrought against the Nazis. I actually found myself sympathising with them, especially the officer who bravely faced death by baseball bat.
I don't know. Maybe there is an expectation that Tarantino should be maturing as a director. But I'd rather him just keep doing what he does best, than degenerate into a fisher of Oscar statues.
re Up_all_might's comments on Avatar....you've got me very excited now...a love story with Sam Worthington in it! About time we got a decent action movie with some luuuuuuuurv in it too.
The trouble with Avatar, and the hype that is associated with it, is when the day comes and you see it, it's over in two or so hours.
I'm used to this kind of hype with games, which you then get months if not years of enjoyment out of. It would be alright if there were a dozen Camerons out there, producing a reliable stream of exciting films, but they are so few and far between.
One thing about Avatar's premise that is annoying me though: why is the main character confined to a wheel chair, when they have the technology to transfer consciousness into an alien species? Surely stem cell advances would have resolved paraplegia by the time we are travelling between planets?
I recently downloaded a 1080p WMV video to watch on my Xbox to see how the quality is, before I decide to get a Blu-ray player or not. I wanted to download a relatively small file so I don't completely screw up my download limit but unfortunately, the only file small enough happened to be a hardcore pornographic video. So, my first exposure to HD is a porno and.. that kind of thing really should not be viewed in HD. I'm still reeling from the things I saw. Such high definition
But yeah, I'm convinced to get a Blu-ray player at least.
I really want to see Inglourious Basterds and Avatar. Re: the latter, I'm not expecting (or even wanting) a great film, I just think it's worth seeing for the CGI alone as it looks AMAZING.
This film actually pulled quite a punch at the end. It's quite and interesting story, and for the first half of the film, i think it was no where near as interesting as the story was. Although it was still intriguing. I don't know what to really say, i have some grips with direction, and the way the film was structured and the twin narratives, but yeah by the end, some really strong film making. The sort of film because of what it's about, people really should go and see.
I saw The Young Victoria and thought it fairly pedestrian. More like a highly polished BBC drama than anything I would consider cinematic, or coming from a strong creative force.
It was still very enjoyable, though Emily Blunt didn't impress me as much as I thought she would. I was more taken with Prince Albert, played by Rupert Friend. Maybe the film should have been called The Young Albert...
Anyone who is interested in royality will eat this up, and the romance between Victoria and Albert is quite satisfying.
I think a better period for examining Victoria as a stand alone character, would be after Albert's death.
