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Tiny T-Rex woke up at 6 this morning, asked if it was morning, so I told him to figure it out himself.
That bought me another hour of sleep. :-)
Edit: Of course, what happened to my clothes in that hour is the real mystery.
Yeah, that's the ticket!
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it's a lot of action and colorful costumes and sets. I'm (not] sorry it isn't the somber line by line reading of historic accounts of his life that most people wanted, but it kept me interested throughout.hey that's one of my favorite movies!Alexander is truly terrible, watch that.
** spoiler omitted **
...If I didn't know you personally, I'd be judging you right now.
Judging hard.
** spoiler omitted **
Who wanted a line-by-line reading of history? People are strange.
The costumes are definitely fun.
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Sorry for everyone I was to contact last night, as soon as I got in, I discovered my wife and I had company- one of her best friends and their son, whom I have known since he was born. He is almost 8 now. Here is a transcript of some of our conversations...
Him: Be a doll and get me some juice.
Me(shocked): Where did you learn that type of language! I am not going to be a doll and get you any juice!
Him(sheepish): TV...
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Him(while outside running around, playing...and balancing almost perfectly on everything he likes to climb upon, including architecture and chairs for public use, occasionally crouching onto his haunches and brooding EXACTLY LIKE NIGHTWING(tried to find an old picture from the early 90s of him doing the pose, but I couldn't find it, it was from A Lonely Place of Dying if you have the story arc[TIM FOREVER!!!!!]): I want to move in with you guys when I turn 18.
Me: With US? But don't you want to find your own place, live with friends and stuff?
Him(extra brood-y): My friends will be DEAD TO ME BY THEN!
Me: Uh. Okay. Well, what about a girlfriend? Don't you want to live with your girlfriend?
Him(No longer brood-y): Oh YEAH! We'll kiss every day! Make love every day... [far away gaze, whispers] It'll be GREAT....
--
Him(Still crouching, balanced perfectly on decorative architecture outside the house, extra brood-y, upon seeing someone take a shortcut through the grass to get in the house after parking his car in the garage): That man...BROKE THE LAW...
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Him(looking around posters in office, pointing to a risque one): That picture is..INAPPROPRIATE! She's standing there sticking her butt out!! That's so...inappropriate... (stares at poster for a while)
Me: Uh..if it's so inappropriate, why are you staring at it?
Him: I'm remember it's....INAPPROPRIATE! And why is that one's BOOBIES so big! That's...impossible...Inappropriate and impossible.
Me: You're still staring.
Him: REMEMBERING!!!!
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I like that kid's memory.
Just for that outrageous opinion, I'm unfriending you on Facebook! Take that, Freehold~!
Prime example: The Green Mile.It is usually a good idea to avoid the movie if you have already read the book.I don't necessarily agree.
I think it's true in many cases, but in many others the difference of experience is worthwhile enough. It fully depends on how invested you are in the source material and whether or not the book was adapted in order to make a good film or in order to make a quick cash grab.
(Though you can, of course, feel free to enjoy it, I'm... I can't... I just... I'm impressed, let's say. Then again, I liked Gladiator, and we all know it's lack of historical fidelity, soooo...)
Hm. I think I got ninja'd here...
But not because of that opinion.the thing that Disney did last December
You, sir, are a silly face. :P
:D
Well, obviously, an opinion can't change what you look like...
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[semi-threatening punchline redacted]
Tac, my man, snarking on your snarks is just so . . . much . . . fun. :D
Pre-Disney Expanded Universe Forever!
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But then we wouldn't have Disney crossovers, like Elsa Moves To Tropical Hoth.
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Or Stitch The Jedi, or Passion Of The Jar-Jar, which promises to be the highest grossing R rated film ever.
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... Passion Of The Jar-Jar, which promises to be the highest grossing R rated film ever.
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They kill him off in two seconds and the rest of the film is the year long after party.
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There's no place for Disney meddling. Especially not in Star Wars. If George had been content to not force the issue of 7-9, keep collecting his cut, and let the EU writers continue as they had been, I think things would have gone better, from my perspective.
Please pardon my emotional investment, ladies and sirs. I paid the $$ to give Disney a chance to persuade me away from my misgivings, and they failed miserably -- even J.J. Abrams couldn't tip the scales, and i like what he has done with Star Trek . . . .
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Considering George Lucas' last three Star Wars movies, I'm fine with it.
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:|
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Teaching the kids how to wield weapons with their foot.
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Considering George Lucas' last three Star Wars movies, I'm fine with it.
This is effectively my opinion.
I love and respect Mr. Lucas tremendously - we wouldn't have Star Wars, Indiana Jones or a host of other important things without him.
But somewhere along the line, he lost the ability to have people tell him "No." or otherwise adjust the things he wrote to make them better for the actors and audience.
I will go on record right now and state that the divergence between book canon and film canon is a deep cut and disappointment.
But there is a problem: there is no way to film Star Wars, as it's currently written.
The Extended Universe novels are not able to be filmed.
Let's take a single example, and I'll get to the general from there.
Mark Hamill is the Luke Skywalker and there is no other... but he's no longer able to play the role of the Thrawn Luke, and, frankly, none of the other EU Lukes are really screen-worthy. There are some phenomenal writings out there, yes... but none of them are worth translating into big budget cinema, because none of them really continue his story from the films - the story of the Skywalkers.
Of course, there's the Dark Horse series, but they suffer the same problems: universally, the actors are all too old.
This is not the fault of the actors, of course. I don't hold that against them. But here's the problem. No matter how awesome Star Wars is (which is super-awesome), it's neither eternally relevant, nor immune to the ravages of authors who misunderstand the property pretty badly.
All of this creates a really cool, but increasingly weighty world of lore that people feel increasingly intimidated by, and provide a barrier for entry into the series.
Fifteen years ago, if, instead of The Phantom Menace and the rest of the prequel trilogy, we'd gotten an amazing adaptation of EU, then I think criticism of Disney's decision to ditch the EU in an attempt to more or less reboot the franchise would actually not only be valid, but solid.
Instead, we got the prequel trilogy, and the last fifteen years have passed.
(And, for the record, there are genuinely good things that have come out of that: like the Darths and Droids comics, clever fan theories, Ewan MacGregor, and even elements of the world building.)
Because that time has past, the time for making the EU films has also past.
We might be able to pick up with the more recent ones... but that leaves us (the audience) trying to learn, "Who was Mara, who is this Ben kid; why is everyone afraid of Abeloth (some people would recognize this as a slightly dyslexic CR 7 D&D monster who is definitely not a shapeshifter and not a seductive woman!); since when are their Lovecraft entities running around with godlike powers; who are all these women that want to bang Luke; why is there a girl who is talking about her dead brothers - who're those; wait is Luke trying to kill a god; where is Chewie;...?" and so on. These are questions that could be answered, of course, but the answers - not to mention the setting - would basically make the films no longer feel like Star Wars... because the books from which they derive often make fans feel like the setting no longer feels like Star Wars.
So Disney was faced with a choice: do something that would tick everyone off and not feel like Star Wars and have niche appeal; or do something that would tick some people off and feel like Star Wars and have mass appeal?
They went for the latter.
And as a fan... yeah, it hurt. But it's also about time.
This is not the first time the films directly contravened - even directly repudiated - the EU. There were already printed materiasl that were considered non-canon and dubious canon.
And no matter what steps people took to try and reconcile the two, the longer the franchise went on, the more errors were going to crop up between EU and film.
I didn't want them to drop the EU. But it needed to happen.
And The Force Awakens was, frankly, a solid film with a wonderful cast.
(I heart BB8~! And Finn! And Rey! Poe's okay!)
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What's interesting about your point, TL, is that I have never been exposed to the EU stuff.
The original Star Wars came out when I was a kid. I remember joyfully waiting in blocks-long lines just to see it. Again, and again, and again... 13 times in total.
When The Empire Strikes Back came out, it was like a knife to the gut. We were finally coming out of the, "The bad guys always win" 70's and into movies that let the heroes just be heroes again... and the bad guys won. But my father loved it, and said that when I got older, I'd understand and love it too. Many consider it the best film of the franchise. I still consider it the "worst" of the original trilogy, but it's still mountains better than any of the dreck that has come along since.
I managed to enjoy Return of the Jedi in spite of the ewoks because of Luke's epic journey to Jedihood. And yet even then we saw the signs that Lucas was losing his magic. The ewoks? An atrocity! The blue glowy ghost Jedi? Irritating, to say the least. But I loved watching Luke grow into a full-fledged Jedi and a full-grown man in the same film, so I forgave a lot of Lucas' excesses.
The next three films were abominations, with people insisting that, "Oh, this one is better than the last," but no, no they weren't. Lucas was now catering to kids and toy franchises, and the stories made no sense. The Phantom Menace was pretty much Home Alone in Space. Send in the Clones was at least utterly forgettable. Honestly. I remember seeing it, but I remember almost nothing about it. Perhaps that makes it the best of the trio. Revenge of the Sith was so determined to show how bad Anakin Skywalker became that the whole idea of redemption became too much to swallow. "Oh, you're sorry about all that stuff? It's OK. You're forgiven. Even though you murdered an entire dormitory of Jedi children who knew and trusted you, it's all OK."
No. And Anakin was whiny, and annoying, and made me feel like I had unwittingly stepped into a screening of Twilight. I hated that movie because every time Anakin was on screen I started grinding my teeth because I wanted to slap His Whininess so hard.
Anakin Skywalker in the second trilogy made me lose all respect for Darth Vader in the first trilogy. That bad.
Both NobodysWife and I felt that The Force Awakens was little more than a re-filming of Return of the Jedi. Unlikely crew getting together while one learns to use the force? Check! Good guy alliance threatened by doomsday device? Check! Gotta go down to the planet to deactivate the force field to destroy the planet-destroying weapon? Check! Big bad guy who's actually all emo and whiney? Check! (There's an awesome feed NobodysWife subscribed to for a while called, "Emo Kylo Ren.) But again, we can't have someone truly evil, or vile, or bad. We get a whiny teenager. Whee?
So we didn't like The Force Awakens, but it had nothing to do with EU, or Brexit, or Donald Trump.
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Ready when you are sir!
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Finally managed to get the crew gathered for a Carrion Crown session after a long while.
I will hopefully have the session recap ready tomorrow. It's pretty late here now, so I will be calling it a night soon.
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Sparring and beer and sparring and beer
Sparring and beer and sparring and beer
Sparring and sparring and beer and bottoms
These are a few of my favourite things.
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Ready when you are sir!
[Kirk in Wrath of Khan [/ooc]Fire...![/Kirk in Wrath of Kan]
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Star Wars is now politics?!?!?!
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Star Wars is now politics?!?!?!
Double-faved. Reasons.
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You had to mention The Phantom Menace.
Also that whole thing at the end of your post.
But mostly it was The Phantom Menace.
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And if you'll look upwards, my friend, it was TL who rambled on about how the EU ruined Star Wars for him. Practically an essay on trade embargoes, it was.
And if you'll look upwards, my friend, it was TL who rambled on about how the EU ruined Star Wars for him. Practically an essay on trade embargoes, it was.
Actually - no, I think you took the wrong impression.
The EU didn't ruin anything for me.
I love the EU stuff - even the stuff that "doesn't feel like Star Wars" for many.
I love Return of the Jedi (it was one of my favorite of the trio) and I'm even grateful for the Prequels we got - not because they were good, but because they gave us good and fun things (including Summon Bigger Fish).
For the record, I find A New Hope to be an adequate film - quite good, but not as good as either of the sequels.
Both NobodysWife and I felt that The Force Awakens was little more than a re-filming of Return of the Jedi.
Hilariously, this is a very different outlook, compared to most. Most peoples' take away is that it was a "re-filming" of A New Hope* what with the "get the secret plans away from the empire, find the desert person with secret power, find the lightsaber and hermit, learn secrets of the force, find the ancient secrets, blow up the (even bigger) deathstar (complete with trench run) after it kills an important planet(s)" thing going on.
I do tend to agree with you about Anakin - I think Lucas' problem was he went to extremes and he did so too quickly. Anakin just swung from good to evil, and there was no gradiation, no comprehemsible decline, no way to empathize with him. It was consistently, "I'm kind of a whiny hero! Oh, look, I'm a mass murderer! No, wait, I'm a whiny hero, again!" whiplash that made him hard to empathize with or relate to.
But I really like the EU. It's just not filmable. Those are two different things, though.
* (though I disagree)
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I think we can all agree, Family Guy did the best Star Wars movies. :-)
I think we can all agree, Family Guy did the best Star Wars movies. :-)
Well, the first was pretty funny - I don't think I saw the rest, though.
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No, sorry -- we all can't.
Dissenting opinion. You can run with your majority. :D
On a better note: . . . . oh, wait. No more flaming bikes today.
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I think we can all agree, Family Guy did the best Star Wars movies. :-)Well, the first was pretty funny - I don't think I saw the rest, though.
What! Is that possible!
"I would give my right hand for this day to just be over!" - Luke Skywalker fighting Darth Vader.
I think we can all agree, Family Guy did the best Star Wars movies. :-)Well, the first was pretty funny - I don't think I saw the rest, though.What! Is that possible!
"I would give my right hand for this day to just be over!" - Luke Skywalker fighting Darth Vader.
Never saw it, my friend.
No, sorry -- we all can't.
Dissenting opinion. You can run with your majority. :D
On a better note: . . . . oh, wait. No more flaming bikes today.
You're right - I can't say it was better than Episode Sev- oh, right, no bikes. ;D
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Leia (flying the Millennium Falcon back to Bespin): Luke! If that's you raise your right hand! No, your right hand!
Luke: It's me you f@*%ers!
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College field trips are best field trips. In two days in the mountains, I've:
Pushed a pickup truck up a hill because somebody wasn't paying attention to the fuel gauge
Gone on a non-professor approved moonlit hike on a backwoods trail drunk, stoned, and without a flashlight
Ridden in the back of a pickup truck on a bumpy ass dirt road hollering, fist bumping, and blaring country while the professor followed us in the van shaking his head
Gotten lost multiple times
Followed the professor's van in the pickup truck on the highway, astounded we were going above 80 and he was still leaving us behind
Eaten hella barbecue
Seen a giant ass owl
Climbed theough a dark, damp, bat infested lava tube
Touched F$#+ING SNOW
Gotten into a drunken argument with the German born professor about the relative merits of European and Californian beer.
Cut my hand scrabbling over rough rocks and waved the blood covered appendage about like a trophy (no worries, I don't need stitches and have full use of the hand)
Told and listened to mad drunken tall tales.
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"You wake up in a hospital, hurting, bruised, bandaged but apparently healed, and terribly hungry... You don't remember your last night... What do you do?"
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Snow, you say!
Never heard of it.
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Zootopia was a really good movie! I love you, FaWtL!
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I have seen the prequel SW movies a few times by now. What strikes me is that there is little that is atrocious about them. Yes, even TPM. The stuff people usually bring up is not truly as horrible as it is said. Jar-jar is annoying, yes, but having read a deeper analysis in the Darth Binks theory, I find that rather convincing. If he were to have been an anti-Yoda, but due to the Jar-jar wars about racial stereotyping dropped in favour of Dooku, who felt pretty much tacked on, that would have been AMAZING. Just think, he would have been killed off as a proper villain. And not one character in the history of movies has ever been so hated. The politicking and so-called boring stuff is really fascinating to me. Anakin is a whiny kid, but really, where did you think Luke got his whine from? Both of them are deeply flawed people. I maintain that Yoda was right from the start: neither should have been trained. Both of them fell. Luke fell when he gave in to his anger and tried to strike down the unarmed emperor. All the talk of "I am a Jedi like my father before me." is just a critical success on a Diplomacy check against Darth Vader. All in all, the movies are visually great, with decent plots, some great actors, I'd say they suffer mainly for comparison to ANH and ESB. Which are given many free passes.
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Volskygge is annoying.
Stupid Skyrim puzzles!
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I'll see you at Jacob Javits soon Freehold. Soon.
That almost makes me want to play Witcher 3
Almost.
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Zootopia was a really good movie! I love you, FaWtL!Funny I was watching that last night on Netflix to pass out.
Didn't work I stayed up past 7 AM, then watched Tora, Tora, Tora!
In the scene that pirated DVDs Duke Weaselton is selling are movies with word plays to other Walt Disney Animation Studio features.
"Pig Hero 6" (Big Hero 6), "Floatzen" (Frozen), "Wrangled" (Tangled), "Wreck-It Rhino" (Wreck-It Ralph), "Meowana" (the upcoming Moana (2016)), and "Giraffic" (the upcoming Gigantic (2018)).