look i'll go see it, i'll make up my own mind. But I'm guessing what's happening here is most of you here don't even notice how violently propaganda-ish certain movies such as Non-Stop is. I happen to have a firewall to the propaganda since I'm actually aware of the low-level subconscious things going on on screen and how they work. but it still makes me have a bad time because I still have to concentrate really hard not to let them seep in and also it's just garbage. straight up garbage. read "the current situation with american sniper satirical" + "it's not a movie, it's real life", not "american sniper is satire". what I was saying is we've delved into a satirical scene in a movie and it's turned into real life. why is the fact it's now real life it's no longer satirical? everybody goes see this movie all serious-like and doesn't find the act unsettling.....
Mate you sound exactly like all those conspiracy theorists. "THE GOVERNMENT HAS YOU ALL FOOLED/BRAINWASHED! But not me! Of course not me! I'm the clever one, I'm the one who sees through it all, I'm the special one, I'm unique! Look at me! I'm above you all".
that's the problem, sounding like one thing or another. how would you put it to get correct feedback from people? you can easily weed me out from the rest from the fact I don't line up with the rest of them, I don't think the moon landing was staged, nor evolution, I don't believe in aliens having visited us secretly, I don't believe in any god or ghosts or predilections, or spirits, reincarnation, the END.... I'm a very practical and learned man. I stick to stuff that is down to earth and that holds together with everything else I've seen. the way chemical reactions happen line up with math and the atomic structure which helps us in turn to better understand processors. I never defer to "spirits" or "magic" to explain something I don't yet understand. I just recognize it as something I know nothing about. And if I wish to have an opinion about it, I start reading and studying the knowledge accumulated on it over the years by our vast society. War has not been abolished in our world. until we are a frontier-less shared-culture nation from inuits to alaskans, from australians to americans, from chileans to chinese there will BE wars. that is a tough reality but like the atom that explains gravity heat current and erosion war explains propaganda. this brings the question. is the land of the free free from propaganda? why would it be? Don't get me wrong, I've myself lived there 6 years and I loved it! However I can tell you you don't get to open your yapper as much in the U.S. as much as many other countries in the world. and also there is a lot of dishonesty and control going on. The revelation of the activities (and even the mere existence and importance) of the NSA came as a slap in the face to all of america. How baffling to learn that your international spies have turned their eyes on you rather that the foreign countries they are supposed to be studying to protect you from? there's justification in the idea that they weed out the inner criminals who are on home turf and as such represent an immediate small threat, but what about the outer more organised and more hateful of america groups? those constitute a much larger threat as has been demonstrated. Why is it that out of all the other security agencies in the world the U.S.'s is the most inwardly focused one? The most? common... that's the finishing blow. are you sure you can't think of one or two countries that would want to spy on their own people MORE than the US? North Korea? China? Russia? Iran? Belarus? Syria? Afghanistan? Azerbaijan? Turkmenistan? Djibouti? Cuba? Bahrain? Ethiopia? Kazakhstan? Gabon? Laos? Uzbekistan? Jordan? Cambodia? Gambia? Myanmar? Brunei? Oman? Vietnam? Egypt? Qatar? Arab Emirates? Guinea? Guinea-Bissau? Sudan? Chad? Cameroon? Mauritania? Somalia? Zimbabwe? Angola? Swaziland? Eritrea? Rwanda? Congo? Angola? and not only did the NSA not prefer to spy on it's own citizens over the ones of all these contries but it took the world cup for spying on it's own citizens the most... so why when I say that the U.S. still engages in propaganda (as it's been known to in the past, you won't deny me that one will you?), and when I love america and feel american at heart am I a conspiracy theorist?
So Horrible Bosses 2. Absolutely magical. (dunno about the first, it did make me a bit curious but I'm guessing they far outclassed it with this one)
To get back on off topic. I'm curently producing a book, and have worked in publishing for years. You really can not imagine how important the cover is to a book, and how much effort is put into their creation. And to get back on topic, some of my favorite films, off the top of my head... Harold and Maude Death in a French garden Revenge of billy the kid Akira I'm sure there's others, but it's Sunday and my brain has shutdown for the weekend.
you're kidding me right? when I saw this trailer I thought it was a joke. and so did some 18 000 other people on 9gag, can't find the post anymore. this is such a cash grab people can't even really believe it's happening anymore.
I'm sorry but I'm not. hunger games and twilight give me your kind of reaction. Divergence doesn't. Divergence, is made by new moviemakers who respect that we don't want to see the typical movie sins anymore. Spoiler: SPOILERS DON'T READ in this movie when you get a guy saying "you don't have the guts to shoot me" ...... she shoots the guy. in this movie you do have developed characters that die sad deaths. In this movie you do feel for the characters and feel like their fate matters to you. It even fixes what the botched immersion of harry potter. YES this movie has elements of harry potter but better. see how in harry potter there are 4 houses and it's basically a non-choice. I mean apart from ravenclaw. Nobody wants to defend hufflepuff .....and slytherin? dear god. Noone in the theater wants to be slytherin. Clearly everyone in slytherin is more or less closely tied with the bad guys. the terrorists of the wizard world if you will. You kinda start to wonder why this house is there in the first place? So that you could have en environment for kids to start on the wrong path in? and if ever you ever have doubts, you are surrounded with peer pressure to KEEP you in the wrong path as the books CLEARLY demonstrated. It's a wonder why noone thought slytherin was a bad idea. And at the second part of the last book they clearly all seem to think so, as they send all slytherin to the dungeons. Great! you could've had a fourth more people fighting on your side, great forward thinking there! yeah sure it's easy to be captain hindsight, but when you're expected to believe dumbledore anticipated all these events after his death, not anticipating slytherin house's betrayal seems kind of conversely dumb. In Divergence there is no "dumb house" like this. There are five houses to which you can genuinely relate. This is all done so cleverly : each 'house' is a social subcategory. There's a bunch who's trait is of-the-top-of-the-head honesty ; they do lawyer's and general law work, also journalism if there is whatever need. (they are non-corrupted versions of our real-life lawyers and journalists). Then another who's trait is carefreeness, open mindedness, basically the hippes. they make food, work in the fields. (our farmers, you could say) Then a group that's all about selflessness. making sure others get their share. They are tasked with organisation and regency of the government. when not debating and voting, they distribute the food and goods that is stockpiled as equally as possible and spend time caring for the basical equivalent of the homeless in this world : "the factionless" (dumb name, I know) The group that does all the sciencing (I think I might have chosen that one) The group that does more physical things (yes farmwork is physical, we're talking about speed allied with force, the soldiers and police, the olympics, these kinda guys. this movie manages to ally good 'house-concept' and a good clever critique of our society. Do you not immediately want to pick a house? I mean sure in HP you wanted to too, but everyone picked gryffindor anyways! I mean : "the brave at heart, Their daring, nerve and chivalry...." what kinda bullshit is this?!? who doesn't want to be precisely that? When you're staring "ambition, cleverness, cunning, resourcefulness, and pure blood heritage" in the eye, there isn't much of a choice. on the other hand if you fancy yourself smart you might see yourself in Erudite, the group in Divergence that does all the sciencing. If you are anti-control and back-to-earth kinda guy you would see yourself as an amity (the rasta-hippies, I'm being VERY brief and as a result inexact, there's a better overview here : http://divergent.wikia.com/wiki/Factions ), If you like law and order and the truth (at least the ideals you originally joined law school for before, you realised the kinda person they were turning you into wasn't you) then you'd love Candor. If you like sports : Dauntless. If you're selfless : Abnegation. "Oh yeah? well what if I think all of this is bullshit, because I want to do ALL those jobs" well you're in luck, because that's what the heroin is : a divergent. A person that fits just barely in all those categories, and is never at home being only a single one. This movie really hit home with me there. (and I know you're going to say "so does everyone else!" no not really. people generally say that there's thing you're best at, and you should find it and turn it into a job. All the people. your parents, your teachers... not only that but, Divergence is incredibly self aware. I mentioned they got rid earlier of a couple movie-sins : the "you can't shoot me" and the "oh I died - we don't care" movie-sins come to mind. these are far from being the only ones. There's a lot of image-explanation. things are straightfoward and obvious. Hence they also got rid of the "villain-plot-exposition" movie-sin as well. they surprise you. usually things are obvious and never surprise you anymore. (like holy sht who DIDN'T anticipate in Cap Amer 2, the all-access pins they put on where actually deadly (I even though it would be thermite specifically, there was an underlying tone of it all throughout the movie, however they kept showing it do things it actually can't do, whatever...) they surprise you in divergence. You don't actually expect the beating story to turn out to be true. You do however expect the law lady to turn out to be evil oh well score's 1-1 on that. the general story? yeah you could say definitely not original. we've seen plenty of post-apocalyptical dictature movies. Yeah but most of these end up by the heroes successfully tearing down the dictature with a revolution, a grand finale battle and the sun sets on them looking forward to a brighter future. The catch here is, things aren't bad or twisted to begin with, sure they seem a bit on the edge, but definitely far from totalitarian. In the end, no revolution, no brighter future, no nothing. Just an escape and perhaps, just perhaps, the prospect of a recognition of a 6th faction. pretty new and different I'd say. The movie had an overall positive message. Trust yourself, be who you are, find yourself and be yourself no matter the harsh conditions. And : oh hey, here's a at look how society without money could be. You like it? good we can try it. you don't? oh well I tried.
You liked a certain concept and rated it 10/10? cause that's the part i don't believe you're serious about. I also didn't read harry potter because it featured 4 houses, dumbledore would cheat his way to make griffyndor win anyway. I read it for other reasons.
ok no, i didn't rate 10/10 i was only using the meme to say that's it's surprisingly good. If I had to give it a definitive score i'd say 7/10 and that's an extremely high mark because I'm one stuck up hipster. of course, I was just saying that was one of the other pluses in HP. HP really transported you out of this world into another realm. It did it so well that you really wanted Hogwarts to be real. The four houses concept is just a detail inside this massive tableau, but an interesting one nonetheless. there's lot's of things going on with the houses throughout the story. certain elements of the story make sense because of what you learned about the houses. it was an intriguing element and I still do believe that originally, J.K. Rowling, more than just making you want for Hogwarts to be real wanted you to imagine yourself in one of the houses specifically. in the end Divergance is a clever mix between "The Wave" (2008), "Equilibrium" (without all the action), and HP. (just because of the houses thing, maybe there's a better example, something that focuses more on this)
@Devak (it got too movie related I decided to move it here instead) naw man, start watching better movies. I swear to you there are movies out there for "psychs" (as you like to call them, but really it's intelligent people) out there. here's a couple good recommendations to start you off on : Ghost in The Shell Akira The Big Lebowski Catch me if you Can Blade Runner (dear god please make the final cut (and only copy, for some fortuitous reason) of Blade Runner II be hit by a freak thunderstorm and perish so that it may never be shown on screen) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang <- judging from what I know about you now, this one will hit the spot Fight Club In Bruges Burn After Reading The Men who Stare at Goats Fargo Sunshine Hypercube Automatta Moon District 9 Mr. Nobody The Fountain Solaris Total Recall (the new one, btw the score is off the hook) The Signal (also the new one, yeah I know I made a big deal with blade runner but there are exceptions, hypercube up there is also second of the name and the first and third sucked ***, the new Dredd actually has it's moments) Holes (I always loved the book and the movie really hit the spot for me, but maybe a bit predictable and not a-propos in this list, just a personal favorite.) If you can stay in that brainless mode though, and forget that you ever saw it before, just watch The Matrix (only the first) at night and alone and with no other lights than the screen (and a little high if that's an option). It blew my mind.
Even good movies follow tropes. Though some are more of a "trope handbook" than expected. For instance, i don't see the brilliance in "cabin in the woods" because in every conceivable way it was a standard movie with an ending pretending to be clever. Sunshine was great for litterally 80%. The final parts are way too WTF and felt like a different movie altogether. The premise is idiotic but i can live with that. District 9 desperately needs a sequel. "three years" never made be feel such a lump in my throat before. Truly excellent movie. Total recall was OK, i felt that the ambiguity was what made the original better. Still, pretty good. c
