Usually pre-school to Grade 2 at least. I know I was haha.

All males are obsessed with dinosaurs at some point in their lives.

My brother took it a good deal farther than most…but now he’s more into Star Wars and video games.

Not just because the movie has dinosaurs, but because it used them so well. The build up for the T-Rex reveal? Cinematic gold.

Define “further than most”

He has at least 300 dinosaur figurines, 5 scientific books about dinosaurs (did he read them or just look at the pictures? Debatable). He wouldn’t shut up about the accuracy or inaccuracy about portrayals of dinosaurs in popular culture for at least 8 years, and on the Jurassic Park ride in Universal, he was so happy to see the T-Rex at the top that he kept yelling, ‘my friend, my friend!’ before we plunged off the waterfall.

It was cute, but I’ve had enough of dinosaurs now.

Dinosaurs are okay. I’d have been much more interested in, say, Pleistocene Park. Just imagine a short-faced bear escaping its enclosure, or being chased down by a pack of dire wolves or a pride of sabre-tooth cats.

The Hunger Games is on Netflix streaming now, so I figured I might as well watch it. I wasn’t terribly impressed. The performances were fine, but the story had some real issues. I don’t really get what all the fuss was about.

That kind of stuff doesn’t bother me much, though yeah, the setting doesn’t really make sense. What really bugged me was how schizophrenic it was in portraying Katniss’s position in the story. It seemed like the overall tone and that other Movie Stuff wanted the viewer to think she was an underdog in over her head, surviving a bad situation by the skin of her teeth and whatnot, as is usually the case in stories like these.

But when it came to the actual tangible stuff that happened within the story, that aspect fell apart. Side characters fall all over themselves from the jump telling her how special she is and how she’s going to win, and she gets a higher survival rating number thinger than any of the other contestants, including kids who have apparently trained since birth for it. When you consider that, Katniss is the favorite to win even within the world of the story(setting aside the fact the viewer knows she’ll win since she’s the protagonist). It turns the whole endeavor into Katniss punking kids empirically weaker than herself, and that’s kinda lame.

It kills the sense of danger in a story that hinges entirely on the protagonist being in danger.

I just watched Iron Man yesterday.
Awesome.

It turns the whole endeavor into Katniss punking kids empirically weaker than herself, and that’s kinda lame.

I know what you mean- I read the book, and didn’t see the movie, but it seemed to me that Katniss was sort of morally exempt from all the terrible things the Hunger Games force you to do to survive.

@sansa – re: Hunger Games: I don’t recall the books being quite so fawny, so maybe that’s just a result of the movie showing more of other people?

@Willow – I was rooting for Katniss to have to kill Rue too. That’s horrible, yes, but so’s the Hunger Games. They force you into doing terrible things to survive… and Katniss basically got off free without having to do anything too terribly bad.

I hate first person so goddamn much.

It isn’t that bad if the narrator has a particular voice and/or isn’t incredibly annoying. Being really snarky also helps.

It isn’t that bad if the narrator has a particular voice and/or isn’t incredibly annoying. Being really snarky also helps.

Yeah, I don’t really mind first person either. I think it can be used to great effect to show how events and other characters affect a specific character mentally. And it can also be done to do my favoritest thing, cleverly unreliable narrators. (Honestly one of my favorite things about the Dresden Files, which I know I won’t shut up about lately… it’s subtle, but clearly there that Harry’s perspective on himself and others are not quite what they “really” are.)

Both of these things (a character’s emotions and unreliable narration) can also be done really horribly, of course. It definitely doesn’t help that all the awful self-insert Mary Sue fanfic writers (or creative writing writers…) all seem to write in first person present, which doesn’t really help liking that perspective. Third person past is safer if you’re a bad writer, in my opinion.

I think the book says the gamemakers sometimes rate tributes higher because that makes the others want to kill them right away

I don’t think Katniss would have killed Rue. I think they might have separated, and then it would have turned out something like Haymitch and Maysilee in the Quarter Quell.

In the book, I think it could be a little of both. I haven’t read it in a while. But since the public isn’t allowed to find out what goes on at the scoring sessions, the high rating could be seen as their way of ‘getting back’ at her by setting her up as a target for the other tributes, without having to reveal to the public what went on. Besides, I think Seneca Crane (the weird-beard dude), just wanted a good show, and he thought that having Katniss in the games could give him one. His conversation with President Snow showed that. He just thinks that if he gives her the high score, the audience would all cheer for the underdog and his Games would be a success. He doesn’t really think through the implications of rewarding the rebel.

Yeahhhhhh. Also, if the Careers are so well trained, why haven’t they been taught the basics of survival for various climes? Did all these careers decide to skip class during woodland/temperate forest day? Geeze.

WRT first person: A lot of amateurs write in it because they think it’s easier and it seems to come more naturally, but it’s actually harder and makes the writer’s failings more obvious.

Technically, she’s the ‘underdog’ because she’s from District 12 and they hardly ever win. It was very unusual for someone from District 12 to be a favorite, which means that it drew people’s attention.

Technically she’s not the underdog, because as you said in the very next sentence, she’s the favorite. Being from Slumsville doesn’t mean anything from a storytelling standpoint. It’s not like they all have some horrible genetic disease. It’s just a pretend obstacle.

And scores don’t always mean anything, since some people get a low score intentionally in order to make their opponents underestimate them.

This also has no bearing on the story as told. Katniss didn’t sandbag the tests, and apparently neither did anybody else within the events of the story since it never came up. As far as we know, everybody tested honestly and Katniss beat everybody else.

Also, just because you can perform it in front of a judge doesn’t always mean you can perform it when your life is on the line.

But she did, and there was never really any doubt about it. Even if that was how the tension in the story was framed, it’s still not as compelling as somebody who’s legitimately overwhelmed. I’d rather hope a character rises to the occasion rather than hope they don’t fall from it.

The Careers count on their fighting skills, which the others don’t have, to grab all the supplies. Because that’s their plan, they don’t really count on the fact that they would have to survive in the woods.

They had a pretty terrible plan, then. Woody Harrelson talked up the threat of starvation and exposure to the elements and whatnot, and if that was really something to be concerned about, there’s no reason not to teach the career kids survival skills. They’ve been training their whole lives for this, so there’s plenty of time to teach them that stuff. The only real reason they haven’t is to give Katniss another advantage. Speaking of which…

It’s pretty ridiculous nobody but Katniss apparently knew how to use a bow. It’s about the best possible weapon you could have in a situation like that. You can hunt for food and shoot people boneheaded enough to walk around with broadswords or whatever. Again, this kind of stuff doesn’t usually bother me, but in this case, it’s just another piece of narrative deck-stacking for Katniss.

So it made her that much more special-er? Welp.

Kill Bill is a very pretty film.

It is. Most of the cool images in it are lifted wholesale from some other, but Tarantino sure has an eye for them.

"Trailer 3 - Man of Steel":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6DJcgm3wNY

Speechless.

Ditto.

Though I laughed with Furious D made the joke “Both of Supe’s dads are Robin Hood!”

Oh, last week I watched Jack the Giant Slayer. (Look, in the middle of nowhere the selection isn’t great.)

Actually, some of the side characters were great and the pacing was perfect. I mean, Jack and the girl (one of the worst examples in the movies I’ve watched in a while of a damsel in distress, I have no idea what her name was) were both annoying, but Ewan McGregor? Squee!

Also, there’s a movie called Tai Chi Zero and it’s amazing.

And the villain was completely sympathetic…in my opinion, even more than the guru character. And better female characters. The sequel is apparently in theaters now!

Anyway, at least it’s great fun to watch, but that other one looks boring,

^^I didn’t get much from the dialogue (I should’ve gone to one with subtitles but it was a friend’s birthday party) but Iron Man 3 looked damn cool. :D

I’m hoping to see IM3 soon.

Wait… sansa, you talking about 2 or 3? You saying 3 is WORSE than 2 in this regard?

In other news I laughed way too hard at this Legend remake post.

The biggest problem with 2 was sort of like the same problems with Spidey 3. It was too much crammed into a film, it needed more focus. Though confused Matthew really tore into it.

I pretty much forgot what happened in Iron Man 2, actually. So 3 is the sloppiest Marvel Studios movie that I remember.

THAR BE SPOILARS

Anyway, point is, I thought it was a movie with a bunch of neat parts that never really congealed into a satisfying whole for me.

Spidey3

Wasn’t that Sony Pictures?

Ok, addressing in hidden, point by point so I don’t get confused :)

You’ve never seen any of the Iron Man movies?! Or the Avengers?

Well, at any rate, Pepper Potts is a standard Iron Man supporting character, coming from the era where yes, everyone had cutesy pun names. It’s not her real first name. Happy Hogan is another comics import, and he’s a former boxer, hence the handle.

...must you always be an asshat?

And now I’m picturing Robert Downey Jr. just standing there in ordinary clothes, taking a leather strap and tying the Iron Man suit to his fist while a bad guy is standing in front of him. Once he has it secured, Downey grits his teeth and lifts the suit up with one arm, orienting it so that it doesn’t hit the ground or any nearby scenery. Then he draws his fist back slightly, and POW! punches the bad guy with the suit-of-armor-ed fist. The moment Downey’s fist strikes, several sounds ring out: the typical “punch” sound effect, the clanging of metal, the cracking of every bone in Downey’s hand, and a massive string of profanities let loose by Downey.

...now if that actually happened in any of the movies, I’d drop everything and go watch them, even though I’m not much of a movie person.

^^Which is weird, since Iron Man 3 was merely serviceable on my part.

I haven’t seen it, but a lot of my friends saw it after reading for their English class and thought it was disappointing (to say the least).

That’s the director of Romeo + Juliet for you.

Gatsby owns so hard as a book that I don’t want to see a movie of it.

That’s the director of Romeo + Juliet for you.

For some reason, we read this play in my 7th grade English class, and when we were done, rather than watch any of the conventional film adaptations, this is the one our teacher showed us. It was a weird fucking thing to watch as a 12 year old.

That’s the director of Romeo + Juliet for you.

Welp. There goes the last vestiges of my interest in watching this. About the only good thing about R+J is crossdressing afro Mercutio.

I think Leo DiCaprio had few good BIG NO moments too.

I would just like to say that for me, Gatsby has never been appealing because of the plot or the characters. It’s just a phenomenally well-written, beautiful book. The amount that is so skillfully conveyed in such a small amount of space is incredible. I had to read it for 11th grade English too, and was not interested until I saw an excerpt from Gatsby in Reading Like a Writer. It was beautiful, unusual, descriptive, and not florid at all. I’m unsure about Luhrmann’s adaptation because Gatsby is a subtle book, and he’s not really a subtle director at all, even though he seems to be genuinely passionate about it.

On the other hand, I’ve always understood why people don’t like it. It’s essentially Rich People Problems- The Book.

Daisy was just the symbol of Gatsby’s real goal.

The tragedy of Daisy is that she realizes that she’s just an empty vessel for other people’s desires and dreams. I hated her when I first read the book, and I do still find her frustrating at times, but there’s more to her than what’s on the surface. There’s a hysterical and desperate undertone to her gaiety that I think is really revealing- and sad. She’s powerless and she knows it, but she’s not strong enough to do anything about it, so she just gives up.

It’s like saying Mad Men is about a bunch of bad people cheating on their spouses.

It pretty much is though. Don Draper is such a fucking bland and unlikable character. But he’s good looking so people ignore that.

Daisy represents some point when Gatsby was actually, truly happy, and he believes that, if he can get back together with Daisy, then he can once again be truly happy.

The sad thing about Gatsby is that this is what he thinks he’s after, but really, their relationship was never the great thing that he builds it up to be in his head. I’ve always interpreted Gatsby’s past with Daisy to be just as constructed as anything else; Daisy might have been infatuated with Gatsby, but if they had ended up together, they would never have been happy anyways. Gatsby is fundamentally self-deluding, and that is kind of pathetic, but at the same time, Nick finds him fascinating because he’s so earnest and optimistic, that you can’t help but hope it turns out all right for him in the end.

I do think that Gatsby is tragic, in the old Greek sense. He’s a man who could be great (and Nick thinks of him in that way at first)- handsome, charming, earnest, passionate, hard-working- but he’s brought down by his own self-delusion and his inability to let go.

What Daisy really represents is a way for Gatsby to become the man he was pretending to be.

What I was trying to say. :P

I haven’t seen Mad Men so I can’t speak as to Don Draper, but I think Gatsby’s a very complex character- and it’s only accentuated by Nick’s biased narration. I agree with sansa that Gatsby’s obsessed with the old money/new money division, but more than that, he’s interesting because he’s always reaching for something beyond that, something completely transcendental that obviously he can never have. He’s not just crassly ambitious or capitalistic (although he is definitely both of those things), and that’s why he’s more than a gold-digger. He wants to be somebody Great, but he has a warped perception of what that actually means.

You just described why he’s tragic, not why he’s shallow.

What I consider the tragic part is that Gatsby is killed just as he started to maybe move on with his life. Everything I mentioned is tragic from an outside, objective perspective, which the book doesn’t supply – Gatsby is too caught up in his little fantasy/pining for what he can’t have, Nick is too enraptured by Gatsby, and no one else gives a damn. Maybe it would be tragic if told from Gatsby’s perspective, but as is, we’re told how great and wonderful he is, and I don’t like being told how to feel about a character.

Now, if he’d gotten what he wanted, only to find that he’s even more of an outcast, then I’d consider it tragic. As is, everyone still seems to like him well enough, so I don’t really see what his problem is. Let’s just say that tragedy is in the eye of the beholder and leave it at that.

Now there are other reasons I didn’t like the book: A) I didn’t identify with or like any of the characters, B) the book’s plot seems to consist largely of a series of random, unconnected events, and C) the narrator is a virtual nonentity.

I don’t like the book, and have no intention of seeing the movie. Can we please move on to something else now?

I haven’t read the book since high school, but I’ve never really understood why Hollywood was remaking it because the conclusion as I remember it seems rather incompatible with Hollywood period. But I found the Schulz article really good, which reminded me why I believed I liked I book but never really connected to any of it.

But to actually change the subject: I saw The Croods, which, yeah.

I rather liked it actually. It wasn’t as awful as I’d assumed it’d be, and also made me a little teary at the end. They kind of lost track of their own theme I think at the end, but it was there. And aside from the rather simple, if effective, plot, the background/world building was positively surreal.