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PaperclipPerfector
21hr ago
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Notes -
Just finished Independence Day on Netflix.
I loved it. Despite its two and a half hour runtime, the pacing is great, and the movie goes by very quickly; it only feels like it drags at a couple of points, such as the first alien dogfight over the desert, which lasts a little too long, or the ending, which goes on for about fifteen minutes after the climax.
The movie is a model of 90's racial colorblindness; you have the white hero (President Whitmore), the black hero (Captain Hiller), and the jewish hero (David Levinson) working together to save the Earth, with nobody ever noticing or remarking upon this fact.
Despite the scale of destruction (dozens of cities wiped out, millions dead), the film has a fun, swashbuckly atmosphere. I particularly enjoyed the president's speech, and the way he personally leads the counterattack against the aliens.
Negatives? The Will Smith dialogue can get annoying ("I got to get me one of these!", "Elvis has left the building!", etc.), but thankfully he only gets a third of the screen time. I'm not sure the little boy or (especially) the dog contributed anything to the movie. And why the hell is that officer waving a gun around while looking at a map?
An excellent summer blockbuster. Highly recommended.
This one defined a childhood summer for me. I rode my bike to the movie theater at least a dozen times to watch that. No idea where I got the money for tickets. Sometimes I went with friends. It was a white town and we could just leave our bikes unlocked outside the theater. Why would we lock them up? Every time I went to see it I made a pit stop at a convenience store and bought a sprite, and every time (except the last one) I looked under the bottle cap and won a free bottle, for which I'd trade that cap in the next time I went to see the movie.
This break in luck portended many things, in retrospect. The next year our school was suddenly about 40% Mexican and we didn't learn much in class anymore. Most of my friends had their bikes stolen from one front yard or another, where they'd been trustingly thrown to the lawn while visiting each other. Mine never was but then I'd wised up quickly. Pretty early in that school year this Mexican boy named Ricardo and his flunkies surrounded me at lunch and made a bunch of threats; I don't recall the details. They got too close and started shoving me around.
I had taken a week-long karate course not long before and the 'sensei' told us a story about a fox and, let's say (because I forget), a hare. They met up and recognized each other as martial artists. The hare bragged about how he knew a thousand techniques; he had a move for everything. The fox said, well, I only know one move, but I've practiced it a lot. Just then a group of hounds burst in upon them. The rabbit hesitated, trying to decide which technique to use, and was torn to pieces. The fox executed his one move perfectly: he ran away, and lived.
Running wasn't an option for me, and I calculated that if I wanted it to be I'd need a distraction. And anyway the story had a second moral, which I'd decided was "Just get really good at one move." I really liked the snap-kick. Look it up and try it; it feels great. So while everyone else in my dojo did all kinds of other things I just worked at the snap kick for the second half of the week.
Ricardo's eyes about popped out of his head when I delivered a flawless kick into his solar plexus. Folded over and dropped with the least resistance I've ever seen from someone who wasn't already unconscious. The henchmen gaped. I ran.
They caught up to me out in the field; idk why our school had such a big play area, or why none of the adult peacekeepers were around. Anyway my next memory is of six boys kicking the living shit out of me while I tried to maintain something like a fetal position on the ground. How that feels on the ribs. Shadowy impressions of their forms around me against the too-bright sky. Nothing after that until the disciplinary hearing, where they were all let off with detention and I was suspended for three days because I 'threw the first punch.'
My dad had told me that if I ever got suspended for self-defense he'd take me to Taco Bell, and that's what we did. The Mexicans still gave me shit after that but only softly. Softly.
So anyway yeah, great movie. Really takes me back.
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Haven't seen that one, but 𝖒𝖔𝖛𝖎𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖉.
A Private Life (2025). 3/5. Jodie Foster as a psychiatrist in Paris who convinces herself that her patient was murdered. RT shows a pretty poor audience rating, but I think it was competently done, even if it was obvious from the start thatshe wasn't murdered . Foster's character overall feels believable and real.
Le Circle Rouge (1970). 4/5. Classic French heist film. The heist sequence is simply kino, and there's several other scenes that are pretty high quality. The plan isn't revealed until it's put into action, which keeps you rapt. Perhaps a little anticlimactic at the end, and my wife fell asleep.
There Will Be Blood (2007). 5/5. Probably this movie has been discussed to death but I hadn't seen it before. The opening sequence does its best to make oil extraction seem evil and almost demonic, which is a little ridiculous and overwrought, but Day-Lewis's performance is just excellent. A very uncomfortable moment for me when I hear a speech like this and find it not entirely unrelatable:
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You should watch I Am Legend next.
I was once exploring a new (to us) state park with my wife, just hiking around at random. Asked the ranger at the entry booth where we could go that wouldn't be too bad for ticks. He recommended the 'Bobcat Trail', so we did that.
When we encountered a second ranger later and related the story he laughed and said "Well, that wasn't nice." And yeah, I don't think I've ever seen so many ticks per linear foot of trail before or since. Not by half, or maybe even a tenth.
Anyway @erwgv3g34 I haven't seen I Am Legend but suspect it is that kind of recommendation.
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