Movie/TV recommendations

[Twig]

The show is at its best when Fi isn't present.

):

Nah, I like Burn Notice. I just find her to be really fucking annoying. And Michael's reactions to her annoyingities... I even prefer Jesse over her, and nearly everyone hated him when he first showed up.

Oh, and this latest season is obviously the worst because ACTUAL SPOILERS

Michael's mom is all depressed now, after Nate's death, instead of being hilariously old-bossy-woman-like

. One of the best characters, ruined.

[ysbreker]

So Jean Claude Van Damme, in 6 Bullets. The synopsis has this to say.

"An ex-mercenary known for finding missing children is hired by a mixed martial arts fighter whose daughter has been kidnapped."

Did no-one realize they're basically just taking JCVD's career and making it into a single movie? This was intentional, right?

JCVD is incredibly good. both story wise and acting wise. Go see this movie if you can!

[Orv]

Not sure how I feel about MIB3. I think I didn't like it.

[makingmatter]

Been watching the first season of Luther. It's a solid British crime series, if a little pockmarked with plot holes; let's be honest, the only real reason I'm watching this is to see Idris Elba acting like the brooding badass he is. God, gotta love me some Idris Elba.

[Ben X]

Not sure how I feel about MIB3. I think I didn't like it.

You're right, you didn't.

[brkl]

It's supposed to be the best one.

The first Season of Luther was really good. I wish Elba was in every show. Unfortunately, the second season went off the rails.

[makingmatter]

The first Season of Luther was really good. I wish Elba was in every show. Unfortunately, the second season went off the rails.

Do you think I should continue with it, or abandon it for something else?

[brkl]

Huh. Really hard to say. It depends on how disappointed you'll feel if it isn't quite as good as you'd like. There's some good stuff in the second season, but also plenty of cartoonish aspects.

[Orv]

You're right, you didn't.

I figured out what I didn't like. It tried to capture the fun qualities of the first two (weird alien stuff and good Smith/Jones chemistry) while interjecting a too-compressed plot that bounces around and never makes you care. II is still probably the best.

[Twig]

I saw Paranorman, and story-wise, it was nothing special. Fun enough for me! But man, the art? Especially at the climax? SO good. The way they render

the witch

. It ain't claymation, but I love it. It's one of those times I go, "Fucking hell, I wish I was an artist instead of a programmer." And then I go, "Well, I could be both..." And then I go, "But where would I find the time?" ):

[TheLastBaron]

I figured out what I didn't like. It tried to capture the fun qualities of the first two (weird alien stuff and good Smith/Jones chemistry) while interjecting a too-compressed plot that bounces around and never makes you care. II is still probably the best.

I find that interesting. I didn't like 2 at all, though I thought the first movie was really good. Haven't seent he third and don't plan on seeing it.

I just watched God Bless America, and the first 15 or so minutes were really good. The movie had so much potential. Then as soon as I realized that the percocious little girl was actually going to be a main character (I didn't see the cover of the movie) I realized it wasn't meant to be. The movie ended up being terrible (obviously this is just imo), the girl was so annoying I wanted to stop watching the movie so many times, but I was watching it with my parents and felt obligated to stay. It makes me mad how good it could have been and how they just made it so stupid.

[shammack]

I felt similarly betrayed by God Bless America. I actually disliked it so much that it retroactively made me less certain about whether I liked Sleeping Dogs Lie and World's Greatest Dad. The whole movie seemed to exist for the sole purpose of having Freddy Rumsen act as a mouthpiece for Goldthwait to deliver several subtlety-free monologues about how the kids today should get off his lawn. The trailer made it look like it was just a puerile adolescent fantasy about murdering everyone who annoys you, but I'd given it the benefit of the doubt that the actual movie would subvert that in some sort of interesting way -- but nope! That's exactly what it was, no more, no less, yet it takes itself seriously enough that Goldthwait seems convinced he's actually making some sort of insightful statement about society.

It also annoyed me that in press surrounding the movie's release he kept talking up the scene where

the main character shoots a baby and how shocking that was supposed to be, and then you see the movie and it's just a dream sequence. So he gets to have his cake and eat it too by murdering a baby, not having it have any actual consequences or relevance to anything else in the movie, but getting to talk it up as an example of how EXTREME and uncompromising his vision was.

And the main character gets on his high horse about how they won't kill (whatever celebrity it was; I forget) because they only kill people who "deserve to die" -- like

a spoiled 16-year-old girl and people who talk in movie theaters

. That's not played as irony or anything; you're just expected to buy into the premise that murdering those people is justified, but murdering, I dunno, Justin Bieber? Whoa, hold the phone! That's a line we won't cross!

Fuck that movie. God Bless America? No no no, God DAMN God Bless America!

[BigJKO]

I saw Paranorman, and story-wise, it was nothing special. Fun enough for me! But man, the art? Especially at the climax? SO good. The way they render

the witch

. It ain't claymation, but I love it. It's one of those times I go, "Fucking hell, I wish I was an artist instead of a programmer." And then I go, "Well, I could be both..." And then I go, "But where would I find the time?" ):

It's not clay, but it's not computer-rendered. It's stop-motion animated, don't know what the puppets are made of, but it's similar in technique as Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

[Roderick]

I felt similarly betrayed by God Bless America.

Shame, the trailer made it look like it could be fun. And, sorry to get all Unabomber on you, but the expression is 'you can't eat your cake and have it'. It makes zero sense to turn that around, because you can actually have a cake and then eat it, whereas the whole point of saying that is that you can't have it both ways.

[brkl]

Nobody ever says that, Rodi, so that isn't the idiom. The original order doesn't imply a sequence of actions (1. Has cake 2. Eats cake) but concurrently having the cake and eating it, which is not possible.

[Roderick]

But the sequence is naturally read into it: I have at many, many times in my life had cake and eaten it. This is standard practice when you get a slice of cake in your hand: what else are you supposed to do with it? This isn't goddamn Schrodinger's cake. Moreso, it's a warping of the original saying and just as obnoxious as current popular, erroneous phrases like 'I could care less' or 'it begs the question'.

Just because the wrong use of a saying gets popularized, doesn't mean one shouldn't rally against it. I know language is changeable and dynamic, but I draw the line at when it's clearly used wrongly and without knowing why. I will try to educate, and then at least people can make an informed decision about it.

[toblix]

http://en.wikipedia...._and_eat_it_too

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/magazine/20FOB-onlanguage-t.html

[Armchair General]

I generally know less about the English language than you guys despite being a bonafide native, but I'm with brkl on this one. People would look at you funny if you said 'eat your cake and have it' and I don't like people looking at me funny, it brings me out in hives. I see where you are coming from Rodi, but your literal interpretation is just too exact for us loose-with-language English types.

Anyway back to my lunch, where I have my cake (in front of me) and I am about to eat it.

[brkl]

But the sequence is naturally read into it: I have at many, many times in my life had cake and eaten it. This is standard practice when you get a slice of cake in your hand: what else are you supposed to do with it? This isn't goddamn Schrodinger's cake. Moreso, it's a warping of the original saying and just as obnoxious as current popular, erroneous phrases like 'I could care less' or 'it begs the question'.

Just because the wrong use of a saying gets popularized, doesn't mean one shouldn't rally against it. I know language is changeable and dynamic, but I draw the line at when it's clearly used wrongly and without knowing why. I will try to educate, and then at least people can make an informed decision about it.

Those two are far more recent developments and 'I could care less' especially is still mostly regional and the only one of the three that's actually illogical. It's not a lost cause yet, unlike 'it begs the question', which fell victim to its wording. There's simply a far more common use-case where the words work fine. The meaning has changed completely in common usage. It would be good for people to know that it has a different meaning in historical and academic texts, but using it with the original meaning in a day to day discussion would serve no purpose apart from confusing people.

For 'having your cake and eating it too', only two words have changed place, no-one is confused about its meaning and the actual sentence isn't illogical unless you choose to read it that way. So it's pretty pointless to try to rollback the wording 70+ years.

[Roderick]

I know. I know. I just have this one filed in my 'must bring up whenever' folder along with the other examples.

I also make it a sport to correct Dutch people pronouncing 'accessoires' (accessories) with the double-c as a soft s instead of the correct 'ks'. I have no friends and everyone hates me.

[brkl]

Ahahah. I saw a Conan O'Brien interview where what's-his-face Frasier actor spent a while claiming 'flaccid' should be pronounced /ks/. Silly man. I bet he's a lot of fun at dinner parties.

[Roderick]

Hahaha, by jove, that's another one. I'm gonna have a ball with this.

[Twig]

It's not clay, but it's not computer-rendered. It's stop-motion animated, don't know what the puppets are made of, but it's similar in technique as Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

The thing I am talking about specifically is definitely not stop-motion animated in any form. It's not really a spoiler, so I don't know why I'm hiding it, but hey.

Claymation was a mistake. I just refer to all stopmotion as claymation even when I know it's not. His body is definitely molded from something similar to clay, though, as can be seen in the making of featurette thing! I don't know words (or really care).

[shammack]

Just because the wrong use of a saying gets popularized, doesn't mean one shouldn't rally against it. I know language is changeable and dynamic, but I draw the line at when it's clearly used wrongly and without knowing why.

That's pretty presumptuous of you. Of course I've thought about how "have your cake and eat it too" is kind of a goofy, awkward idiom that could probably be phrased better. Nevertheless, that's the idiom we're stuck with; I've literally never heard it said another way, so if I want to be understood and not thought of as either confused about the phrasing or a pedantic prescriptivist asshole, that's how I'm going to say it.

[Roderick]

Shammack; my apologies. I insulted you and wasn't even aware of it. By the time I wrote that the discussion had become about generalities, not about the specific usage by you.