Official Off Topic Thread
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Kenneth R.
Cináed
Phanto
Alalalalalalalala.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
lesson: don't put letters backwards in your band name unless they're part of some unreadable black metal logo.
Phanto
Alalalalalalalala.
Or if it's in Russian?
Your artist name should be Kenneth Я.
KeN Я.
K3NЯ.
... k3n- Okay I'll stop.
Your artist name should be Kenneth Я.
KeN Я.
K3NЯ.
... k3n- Okay I'll stop.
Detective Clarence Beauregard
Dehumanized
Ultimate Sacrifice is definitely one of their better songs. On their new album, I'm digging Namaste, Game of Life, and I Am. Haven't heard the last few songs yet, though.
Oh, and Glory of the Empire is another one of their best songs.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
xxCircu2Maximu2xx.
Last night we went and saw Prometheus, which turned out to be a 2 hour bitchslap-school-lesson from Ridley Scott to James Cameron on how to make a Sci-Fi film. It was brilliant. Perfect in every way. I compare it to Avatar only because: both Scott and Cameron's film are recent, human-on-other-planet-with-aliens. Both use extensive visual effects to achieve some vision. The difference is that Scott's effects look real, while Cameron's look cartoony. None of the mountains or buildings or really anything looks CG in Prometheus. In Avatar, a lot of it looked CG. I also have to compare these two because Scott directed Alien 1, and Cameron Alien 2. The former is far creepier and more cerebral, where the second, albeit good, is more of a chincy action movie. With Prometheus having H.R.Geiger on board again for visual style, the weird otherness is back. Go see it.
Last night we went and saw Prometheus, which turned out to be a 2 hour bitchslap-school-lesson from Ridley Scott to James Cameron on how to make a Sci-Fi film. It was brilliant. Perfect in every way. I compare it to Avatar only because: both Scott and Cameron's film are recent, human-on-other-planet-with-aliens. Both use extensive visual effects to achieve some vision. The difference is that Scott's effects look real, while Cameron's look cartoony. None of the mountains or buildings or really anything looks CG in Prometheus. In Avatar, a lot of it looked CG. I also have to compare these two because Scott directed Alien 1, and Cameron Alien 2. The former is far creepier and more cerebral, where the second, albeit good, is more of a chincy action movie. With Prometheus having H.R.Geiger on board again for visual style, the weird otherness is back. Go see it.
Detective Clarence Beauregard
Dehumanized
I saw Prometheus the other night and was not impressed. It wasn't necessarily bad or anything, but I was expecting something a little more. The movie raised a ton of questions but failed to answer them, and I feel that a lot of it was so focused on the visuals that there wasn't enough room for proper character development.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
what visuals? There was hardly any CG. I thought the characters were well-done, especially David and his TE Lawrence references. Questions are good. Questions make a movie interesting. Answers are boring and for amateurs.
See my signature, qft.
See my signature, qft.
Detective Clarence Beauregard
Dehumanized
I felt that they could have spent more time building up the characters. Many of them felt flat, and the ones who had potential to be interesting were killed off early. The only main characters that I found interesting were Shaw and David; everyone else was as exciting to watch as paint drying. Weyland looked terrible - why couldn't they have just gotten an older actor to play the role instead of putting makeup on a younger guy? It made no sense.
I wasn't expecting everything to be answered, but there was literally so little explained (or even implied) that it just didn't make any sense.
I wasn't expecting everything to be answered, but there was literally so little explained (or even implied) that it just didn't make any sense.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
eh, I completely disagree and have to add that all of the subtle details were expertly chosen.
If I had to bitch, it would be that the last 10 seconds of the film be cut. Nothing else.
If I had to bitch, it would be that the last 10 seconds of the film be cut. Nothing else.
Not saying I agree entirely with this (I enjoyed the movie), but I'll just leave this here:
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=prometheus_nutshell
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=prometheus_nutshell
Kenneth R.
Cináed
Detective Clarence Beauregard
Dehumanized
Sorry, but no. There's simply nothing to get. It was just plain bad writing.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
Sorry, but no, it operates on another level, like Blade Runner does. Stripped down to the way you're analyzing Prometheus, Blade Runner would be a half-assed detective movie with undeveloped characters and a lot left unresolved. And yet it is one of the greatest films ever.
edit: A quick search for discussions about the movie yielded only countless threads and newspostings of people demanding answers. It is as if they see the destination and not the journey as the valuable experience. Tragic, but in this era, unsurprising.
The great stories throw you in with the characters mid-stream, and you ride along with them for a while. You experience their trials and triumphs, and you are left without knowing the "happily ever after". It is better not to know. It is always better, without reservation, to not know. The screen goes black, the last page is blank. Not in the more recently common sequel-cliffhanger mechanism, but in the faithful open-ended allowance that we cannot know, that the questions raised are more important, more interesting, and make a longer, deeper impression than any resolution proposed ever would.
We would not, to this day, assail each other on the internet, television, and in the other media on the question of divinity if such a being were to pop out of nowhere and say "yep, in case you were wondering all this time, here I am to confirm that I do exist. Bye". There's no wonder in that, there is no faith in that, there is no mystery. It makes a boring story, regardless of your beliefs.
Some of my favorite films are The Fountain, Abyss, House of Flying Daggers, Blade Runner, V for Vendetta, Lawrence of Arabia (ironic, given its use in Prometheus). In all of these save the last, the fate of the protagonist remains unclear. In all of them, the story would be ruined were it otherwise. The story would be ruined by any of the unanswered questions being resolved. For example: Blade Runner - origami figures, Rachel's status, Deckard's fate. The offworld wars. Just Roy's poetic description of them is enough.
House of Flying Daggers - fate of the protagonists after the duel in the snow. Gravity of choices.
Abyss - What happens next? Better left to imagine. Why were the aliens there? Are they aliens or just unusal undiscovered life? These questions, and not their answers, make the story interesting.
Few stories with resolved questions can truly be great, except when they make up for this in vast scope. Those with such a vast scope generate myriad questions so that the answering of some does not diminish the wonder of others - Lord of the Rings, for example.
The master of such writing is Gene Wolfe, whose novels I sincerely hope never be adapted for film, given the current mindset of audiences and film-makers to strip wonder and ambiguity in favor of action and political themes.
edit: A quick search for discussions about the movie yielded only countless threads and newspostings of people demanding answers. It is as if they see the destination and not the journey as the valuable experience. Tragic, but in this era, unsurprising.
The great stories throw you in with the characters mid-stream, and you ride along with them for a while. You experience their trials and triumphs, and you are left without knowing the "happily ever after". It is better not to know. It is always better, without reservation, to not know. The screen goes black, the last page is blank. Not in the more recently common sequel-cliffhanger mechanism, but in the faithful open-ended allowance that we cannot know, that the questions raised are more important, more interesting, and make a longer, deeper impression than any resolution proposed ever would.
We would not, to this day, assail each other on the internet, television, and in the other media on the question of divinity if such a being were to pop out of nowhere and say "yep, in case you were wondering all this time, here I am to confirm that I do exist. Bye". There's no wonder in that, there is no faith in that, there is no mystery. It makes a boring story, regardless of your beliefs.
Some of my favorite films are The Fountain, Abyss, House of Flying Daggers, Blade Runner, V for Vendetta, Lawrence of Arabia (ironic, given its use in Prometheus). In all of these save the last, the fate of the protagonist remains unclear. In all of them, the story would be ruined were it otherwise. The story would be ruined by any of the unanswered questions being resolved. For example: Blade Runner - origami figures, Rachel's status, Deckard's fate. The offworld wars. Just Roy's poetic description of them is enough.
House of Flying Daggers - fate of the protagonists after the duel in the snow. Gravity of choices.
Abyss - What happens next? Better left to imagine. Why were the aliens there? Are they aliens or just unusal undiscovered life? These questions, and not their answers, make the story interesting.
Few stories with resolved questions can truly be great, except when they make up for this in vast scope. Those with such a vast scope generate myriad questions so that the answering of some does not diminish the wonder of others - Lord of the Rings, for example.
The master of such writing is Gene Wolfe, whose novels I sincerely hope never be adapted for film, given the current mindset of audiences and film-makers to strip wonder and ambiguity in favor of action and political themes.
EyeballKid
Shyamalan'd
RE: Prometheus
I'm completely on board with the idea of a slightly-related Alien movie, that isn't really about the Aliens. I enjoyed the hell out of the ride. The visuals were incredible, the cinematography stunning. The acting was mostly quite good. The movie is a roller-coaster, and it's damn fun. That said, it's exceedingly confusing and feels like minor details were changed halfway through development for the sole purpose of saying, "No, this movie isn't an Alien prequel"...even though every plot point is setting it up so clearly as an Alien prequel! My blame goes to Damon Lindelof. Prometheus suffers greatly from Lost Syndrome.
This does a pretty good job of thinking rationally about the movie and how it relates to what we already know about the Alien universe:
http://www.toplessrobot.com/2012/06/robs_prometheus_faq.php
I'm completely on board with the idea of a slightly-related Alien movie, that isn't really about the Aliens. I enjoyed the hell out of the ride. The visuals were incredible, the cinematography stunning. The acting was mostly quite good. The movie is a roller-coaster, and it's damn fun. That said, it's exceedingly confusing and feels like minor details were changed halfway through development for the sole purpose of saying, "No, this movie isn't an Alien prequel"...even though every plot point is setting it up so clearly as an Alien prequel! My blame goes to Damon Lindelof. Prometheus suffers greatly from Lost Syndrome.
This does a pretty good job of thinking rationally about the movie and how it relates to what we already know about the Alien universe:
http://www.toplessrobot.com/2012/06/robs_prometheus_faq.php
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