FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
User ID: 1175
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4hr ago
IIRC Force Majeure got an English-language remake with Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, I haven't seen it though.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4hr ago
I would define it as bored eyes
I think this is just the default Gen Z expression. Say what you will about millennial cringe, at least we weren't cutting about looking like we just woke up all the time.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
12hr ago
Hard agree on the first two recommendations, haven't seen the others.
I first saw The Vanishing after reading a review of Seven which claimed that Seven had the scariest ending to a thriller since The Vanishing. It didn't disappoint. The only thing I didn't like about it was the soundtrack.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
16hr ago
If I turn the sound off this video could be very useful.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
17hr ago
Lucinda Williams’ World Gone Wrong
I had to turn it off after less than a minute. Good job.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
17hr ago
She's got great taste in underwear, though.
Citation requested.
(I apologise, that was rather Reddit of me.)
going to the club is, in fact, meant to be an enjoyable experience in itself, not some cumbersome prerequisite protocol for finding a mate.
I think this is a folk etymology. Dances as rituals for finding mates are one of the oldest human institutions, to the point that they aren't even peculiar to humans.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
22hr ago
Tate McRae's voice is so annoying. She's lucky she's hot.
An Irish radio station recently polled their listeners on the greatest song of the twenty-first century so far. The winner was "Pink Pony Club" by Chappelle Roan. Jesus. It's not even her best song. Not "agonizing", just repetitive and irritating.
This seems as good a time as any to talk about my favourite Irish narrative films:
- Intermission: a very dark comedy-drama from the 2000s. Using the "hyperlink cinema" style popularised by Tarantino, it follows a diverse cast of Dubliners whose lives intersect in surprising ways. Features a young Cillian Murphy (of Oppenheimer fame) and Colin Farrell, among many others.
- A Date for Mad Mary: a present-day comedy-drama. The titular character is released from prison and returns to her hometown, where she must scramble to locate a date to bring with her to her best friend's wedding. Seána Kerslake's starring turn is mercurial and mesmerising. Probably my favourite Irish film after Intermission above.
- The Wind that Shakes the Barley: excellent war film depicting the Irish war of independence and ensuing civil war. Makes no effort to portray the former conflict in remotely even-handed terms (the atrocities committed by British soldiers are depicted gruesomely, approaching torture porn; while every Brit shot by the Irish goes down without a drop of blood spilled). The director, outspoken English socialist Ken Loach, does not disguise his thesis statement (that Irish independence was a missed opportunity to establish a socialist utopia, instead of just exchanging English landlords for Irish), which I disagree with. Still a cracking and powerful film for all that. Also starring a young Cillian Murphy, along with several actors you might recognise from their later turns in Game of Thrones.
- Michael Collins: a film depicting the same events as TWtStB, but following the mastermind of Ireland's guerrilla warfare campaign, the titular Michael Collins, portrayed by Liam Neeson (Schindler's List). An invigorating and blood-pumping war film, whose only significant weakness is the decision to cast Julia Roberts as Collins's love interest, when she neither looks Irish nor is equipped to do a persuasive Irish accent. (One day I'd like to do a fan edit which cuts her out entirely: I genuinely think it would improve the film substantially.) Aidan Gillen just about manages, and Alan Rickman's turn as Eamonn deValera is surprisingly convincing, aided by his striking resemblance to the genuine article.
- An Cailín Ciúin (also released as The Quiet Girl, a literal translation of its Irish title): a period drama set in the 1980s, adapted from the novella Foster by Claire Keegan. It follows a young girl sent to live with her aunt and uncle for the summer, as her parents aren't really capable of looking after her (or themselves, for that matter). Patient, carefully observed, quietly devastating: you will be shedding tears. Notable for the majority of the dialogue being in the Irish language.
- Black '47: a film about the Great Famine that hit Ireland in the 1840s. But this is no depressing period drama where nothing happens and then everyone dies, no – this is a Western, with six shooters and love-to-hate villains and horseback riding! Tremendous fun. When I saw it in the cinema, I remember thinking that this was the best way to get modern audiences interested in an overlooked part of history: meet them halfway, with a legitimately entertaining crowd-pleaser that incorporates history organically into its story. Bit strange that they cast an Australian actor to play the Irish protagonist, but sure look. Also features Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith, Elrond) and Barry Keoghan; I'd honestly forgotten the latter was in it, which shows what kind of impression he made.
- In Bruges: A crime comedy-drama set in the titular Belgian city, starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes. From the trailers I was expecting a Tarantino-esque black comedy with brutal violence played for laughs. It's kind of that, but also a surprisingly dark film depicting its protagonist processing guilt in a psychologically realistic way. The tonal shifts from wacky humour to morbid pathos might come off as a little jarring, but on the whole I'd still say the movie works. Also notable for featuring the best discussion of the logistics of the imminent race war I've ever seen outside of – well, this site, I suppose.
- Adam and Paul: a Brechtian comedy-drama depicting one day in the life of two heroin addicts in Dublin. The debut by director Lenny Abrahamson, who later went on to direct Room starring Brie Larson. Years since I've seen it, but it made a big impression on me, especially the ending.
Honourable mentions:
- Man About Dog: if you want to watch an extremely silly, juvenile, vulgar comedy film in the vein of American Pie or There's Something About Mary, this is the one for you.
- The General: a perfectly passable crime biopic depicting the Irish gangster Martin Cahill, portrayed by Brendan Gleeson.
- The Commitments: a charming, good-natured and intermittently funny musical comedy which practically every Irish person over the age of thirty has seen at one point or another. The title of the very first post on my blog is a paraphrased quote from it, which features at the very beginning of the article.
- Small Things Like These: another recent adaptation of a Claire Keegan novella. While well-acted and presented, it didn't quite work from me, and something about it felt too self-congratulatory in the same way that Mad Men was sometimes accused of during its run (as Mark Greif put it, "an unpleasant little entry in the genre of Now We Know Better"). Yes, the Magdalene laundries treated young women terribly: there were theatrically released studio films making that point more than twenty years before this one came out. We get it.
- In America: a shamelessly sentimental tear-jerker, it's a semi-autobiographical depiction of an Irish family who migrate to the US in the 1980s following the death of one of their children.
- The Butcher Boy: an utterly bonkers black comedy, based on the novel of the same name by Patrick McCabe. Go into it blind. Nothing I say can prepare you for it.
Now on to the bad:
- Halal Daddy: the single worst Irish film I've ever watched from start to finish. A waste of a talented cast. While watching it, you feel like the screenwriter didn't even want to write the screenplay, and just assembled a Jenga tower of clichés to pad out the running time.
- Dollhouse: if Halal Daddy didn't clinch it, this would be the worst Irish film I've ever watched in full. Jim Sheridan (In America, above) has made many successful films; his daughter Kirsten attempted to ride his coattails to nepo baby-dom, to appalling results. This largely improvised (hence directionless and unmotivated) film features actors who later went on to bigger and better things: Seána Kerslake, mentioned above, and Jack Reynor, who appeared in the Transformers films. It's an utter waste of their talents. Nothing in the film is earned, none of the actors playing working-class Dubs are remotely convincing, and at the end you just feel annoyed and cheated. It comes as little surprise to me that, in the nearly fifteen years since this one came out, Kirsten Sheridan has yet to direct another film.
- The Guard: So bad that not even Don Cheadle could make me stick around. I left after the first twenty minutes.
- Perrier's Bounty: Likewise.
- Seven Psychopaths: A marginal example given its primarily American cast and setting, but I'm including it as it was written and directed by Martin McDonagh (who wrote and directed In Bruges, above) and stars Colin Farrell. What a tiresome tryhard movie, trying to do the meta self-referential thing in a way that's even more annoying than usual. I understand that even McDonagh has more or less disowned it, and he was right to do so.
- The Banshees of Inisherin: The fourth feature-length by Martin McDonagh, adapted from his play of the same name, this one reunites Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson from In Bruges. It's a period drama set on the titular island amidst the civil war of the 1920s. I have absolutely no idea what the point of it was supposed to be, none of the characters' motivations make a lick of sense* and McDonagh's attempts to draw parallels between the civil war and the principal characters' deteriorating relationship (absent from the original play) are sophomoric, historically dubious, and irrelevant. Truthfully, I don't even know what kind of emotional reaction it was aiming for: when I saw it in the cinema, there were a few polite chuckles in the first half, while the entire audience was dead silent for the second half, and it didn't even feel like the film was trying to be funny. But my sister saw it in the cinema, and told me that the entire audience was howling with laughter throughout, which seems insane to me. Also features Barry Keoghan in a supporting role in which he is entirely unconvincing. For McDonagh, that's two Ls and one W – unless Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri turns out to be amazing, I'm comfortable saying In Bruges was a fluke.
- Sing Street: I've heard director John Carney's film Once is really quite good, but have yet to get around to seeing it, perhaps in protest of how inescapable its promotional single "Falling Slowly" was in the two or three years following its release. But having seen two of his other films (this one and Begin Again), I'm unpersuaded. While watching both films, I experienced this horrible uncanny valley feeling that Carney has never actually met another human being, and that everything he knows about the human condition, he gleaned from watching films by other, more talented directors. (See also: Nolan, Christopher.) This one's an exercise in escapist nostalgia, following a teenaged boy in 1980s Dublin who starts a band in an effort to impress a girl he's crushing on. On paper, I should like it: starting a band as a teenager to impress a girl is something I literally did several times; I've walked past the secondary school from which the film derives its title a hundred times and recognise a dozen other shooting locations; I love the 80s new wave and synth-pop songs which inspired the film's original compositions. But it doesn't quite hang together, it's impossible to care about any of the characters, and the ending just feels wholly disconnected from everything that came before it that it can't help but feel like a disappointment.
*Near the start of the film, Colm (Brendan Gleeson) says he doesn't want to waste any more time listening to Pádraic's (Colin Farrell) inane stories, and would rather spend his remaining years focusing on his fiddle playing, which gives him a sense of purpose and satisfaction. Cool, makes sense. But then when Pádraic refuses to leave Colm alone, to illustrate the extent to which he doesn't want to be bothered, Colm decides to
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
I'm sorry to tell you this, but I got to halfway through Tarkovsky's Stalker and turned it off.
You made the right choice. I sat through the whole thing and it didn't improve.
It's bad enough when people die as a result of making a good movie. No one should die as a result of making a boring movie that sucks.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
Yeah, off the top of my head I couldn't remember which episodes were from which season. There are a few episodes from season 10 I remember enjoying as a teenager ("The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace", "Mayored to the Mob", "Viva Ned Flanders", "Screaming Yellow Honkers", "Maximum Homerdrive"), but I don't think I've watched any of them since, and suspect I wouldn't find them quite as amusing if I watched them again now. It looks like the most recent season containing an episode I watched as an adult and enjoyed was season 8, featuring "You Only Move Twice", "A Milhouse Divided" and "The Springfield Files" among others.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
It seems odd to say that the casual fans are the ones who enjoy all of the output, where the hardcore fans are the ones who only like the best output.
By "hardcore fan", I'm referring to people who make a point of watching every episode when it comes out, buy the merch, know the lore etc. By "casual fan", I'm referring to people who will watch an episode when they're bored at home flicking through channels, but won't go out of their way to watch every episode. The impression I get is that the people who watch newly-released episodes of The Simpsons are mostly in the latter camp. I imagine if you surveyed people "in the last year, have you watched at least one episode of The Simpsons?", the number of people who would answer in the affirmative would be massive compared to the number of people who would answer positively to the question "have you watched every episode of the most recent season of The Simpsons?"
To illustrate, imagine you have a show with a hardcore fanbase of 1 million people, and a casual fanbase of 50 million people. The hardcore fans make a point of watching every single episode within a day or two of release, while the casual fans only watch the show when they're aimlessly flicking through channels, and only one in ten happens to land on it any given week. The show ends up with ratings of 6 million people per week, which comprises the same 1 million hardcore fans every week, plus a rotating roster of 5 million casual fans. The show eventually undergoes so much change and declining quality that it alienates the hardcore fans, but if the population of casual fans who'll tune to watch an episode occasionally is big enough, it can sustain the show even if it no longer really has a hardcore fanbase.
It's a bit like that joke about how Maroon 5 signed a deal with the Devil whereby they would have numerous #1 singles, but no one would ever call them their favourite band. Have you ever met someone who said their favourite band was Maroon 5? By the same token, lots of people still watch The Simpsons, but I'd say you'd be hard pressed to find someone who says it's (still) their favourite show.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
That's very weasily wording. A permanent resident is not necessarily a Finn.
I agree, I was paraphrasing the citation I provided. It seems that's how Statistics Finland defines "a Finnish person". It's not the definition I would use, but it was the best one available.
Each of these countries has a smaller population than Israel
To nitpick your nitpick, Sweden's population is slightly higher than Israel's.
If Israel is not an ethnostate, then I just want European states to implement the same laws that will also make them not-ethnostates.
Fair enough, I don't think I'd really object to that. I do find it rather tiresome how the people criticising Israel for being an apartheid ethnostate never apply the same criticisms to, say, Japan or Korea.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
I'm calling it a speculative thriller, set in the medtech industry. If you're interested feel free to DM me.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
I see your point. But as I'm fond of noting, contrary to claims that Israel is an ethnically homogenous ethnostate, Arabs make up fully 21% of Israel's population, while 6% are listed as "other", meaning ethnic Jews only make up 73% of its population. How does that compare to the other countries you mentioned?
- According to the most recent census, 84% of Lithuania is Lithuanian.
- According to the most recent census, 63% of Latvia is Latvian.
- According to the most recent census, Estonia is 69% Estonian.
- According to the most recent census, Sweden is 72% Swedish.
- According to Statistics Finland, 89% of the current Finnish population were born to mothers who were permanently resident in Finland at the time of their birth
- According to a 2012 government study, Norway is 81% Norwegian.
- According to 2025 statistics, 84% of Denmark is Danish.
- According to the most recent census, 84% of Ireland is Irish.
- According to the CIA World Factbook, 79% of Iceland is Icelandic.
The total population of the countries listed above is ~40 million, and the percentage of that population who are considered native to their respective countries is about 79%. So contrary to claims of it being an ethnostate, Israel is actually more ethnically diverse than the average of all the countries you listed. The only countries which are more diverse are Latvia, Estonia and Sweden (and that last one could well be a rounding error). And it hardly needs stating that, in pretty much all of the countries listed above, the lion's share of the non-native population is made up of people from ethnic backgrounds closely related to that of the native population e.g. 24% of Latvia is Russian, as is 20% of Estonia; Scandinavians often migrate to their Scandinavian neighbours and so on.
Frankly, based on the countries you mentioned, I don't really buy this narrative of conniving Jewish rootless cosmopolitans pushing for the great replacement in foreign countries while jealously maintaining perfect ethnic homogeneity in their homeland. Lithuania, Finland, Ireland etc. are far closer to being ethnostates than Israel is, or ever was.
You might well object that, even if Israel is more ethnically diverse than a lot of people acknowledge, the Knesset aren't exactly pushing for open borders or letting in asylum seekers in their hundreds of thousands. That's a fair point. At the same time, Arab Israelis can vote, stand for election, serve in the military and so on, a majority of Arab Israelis consider themselves proud citizens of Israel, and if there are serious plans to ethnically cleanse Israel of its Arab population by forcible deportation, I'm not aware of it.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
Are you saying that white supremacist organisations are flocks of wolves?
Conservative estimates of when The Simpsons stopped being good put it at season five, while more generous estimates (I'm in this camp) put it around season ten. No matter how you slice it, The Simpsons has been bad for at least twice as long as it was good. It's weird to think of The Simpsons as having a net-negative impact on popular culture, with its molehill of classic episodes which left an indelible mark on the popular imagination being dwarfed by its mountain of unwatchably bad ones. But maybe I'm thinking of this wrong and entertainment is a strong-link problem, where it doesn't matter how much rough you create as long as there are a handful of diamonds scattered throughout.
The Simpsons doesn't feel like the kind of show where they kept it going because the hardcore fans want it even if the quality is declining over time. It feels like the kind of show where the population of casual fans is big enough that a critical mass will keep watching, while the original hardcore fans look on in horror as it transforms into a shell of its former self.
I don't know how this didn't occur to me before, considering I just finished it recently. My girlfriend recommended a German black comedy series called How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast), whose fourth and final season came out last year. It concerns a recently dumped teenaged boy who, in a quest to win back his ex, starts a darkweb site to sell ecstasy in a bid to impress her. Consistently funny and engaging throughout with a cast of likeable characters, and no major drop-offs in quality from one season to the next. I will admit that the pacing in the last season felt a little rushed, but not fatally so, and the ending felt earned and satisfying. The only major downside I can see is that it's so much a product of its time that it may come off as somewhat dated ten years from now. As black comedies about unlikely drug barons go, for my money it's a better series than Breaking Bad, and I mean that without a shred of irony.
I recently finished the fourth draft of my novel. In the next couple of weeks I'm hoping to submit the first three chapters to a competition, but I'm still not completely happy with them (particularly the first few paragraphs of the first chapter, which have been heavily revised since the third draft).
Would anyone be interested in acting as a beta reader for just the first three chapters (~5k words)?
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
For example? "Progressive policies" is a large set.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
the defection dynamic causing the conflict is still observable today.
How are the Jews defecting now?
I don't dispute the existence of dedicated fans who will go out of their way to watch certain shows every week that I would turn up my nose at. Plenty of my female colleagues make a point of tuning in to Love Island every week, in part because they don't want to be excluded from the "did you see what happened on Love Island last night?" water-cooler conversations the next day. I'm not suggesting that only shows admired by the intelligentsia or by snooty TV critics can attract a fanbase of devoted, hardcore fans. Probably an outright majority of shows with devoted fanbases are ones that TV critics wouldn't be caught dead watching (e.g. just about every soap opera you care to mention: Coronation St, EastEnders and so on).
But I don't think it's controversial to claim that some TV shows can be sustained by attracting a sufficiently large audience of casual fans who won't tune in for every episode, but will collectively watch enough episodes to keep the ratings up. (Probably most game shows fall into this category.) The impression I get is that this is now a category The Simpsons falls into, with the audience of devoted fans who will go out of their way to watch every episode having dwindled over time. I could be wrong, but that's the impression I get.
In an attempt to put hard figures on my gut feeling, it's indisputably true that the show's ratings have plummeted over time, from a peak of 30 million early on to something like 2.5 million today. (The decline would be even more striking when controlling for population.) This pattern is certainly consistent with only the most hardcore of the hardcore fans sticking around. Alternatively, it could be the case that the show's audience is primarily made up of casual viewers who'll only tune in when they have nothing better to do or there's nothing else on the tube.
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